


Sweet Willow

by CherryParfait



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alexandria Safe-Zone (Walking Dead), Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Beth Carl and Enid live too, Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Mika has some abandonment issues, Team Family, also featuring The Nightmare on Elm Street (A Love Story), and other scary bedtime tales by Daryl Dixon, but I tried to list the most important ones, but mostly she's a cute little gumdrop and she's gonna beat this world, mika lives, some cute bethyl moments because i can't help myself, the gang's all here pretty much everyone makes an appearence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-16 08:07:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 24,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29329032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CherryParfait/pseuds/CherryParfait
Summary: The last thing that Mika remembers before the big black hole in her memory is Judith screaming.Mika Samuels was eight years old when the world ended. She is ten the day she wakes up in a cottage in the woods, and discovers that her sister is dead. Even worse, that her sister tried to kill her.But Mika didn't die.[[AU canon-divergent post "The Grove", in which Mika survives.]]
Relationships: Abraham Ford/Sasha Williams, Daryl Dixon/Beth Greene, Enid/Carl Grimes, Ezekiel/Carol Peletier, Maggie Greene/Glenn Rhee, Rick Grimes/Michonne, Rosita Espinosa/Abraham Ford
Comments: 55
Kudos: 69





	1. Flower Girls

**Author's Note:**

> So "The Grove" is like a perfect hour of television and I would change nothing about it. But then one day I'm just sitting around, thinking about zombies as one does, and my brain just goes: "Okay, but what if Mika lived?"
> 
> ...and the next thing I knew I had 10,000 words.
> 
> This splits off from canon directly after "The Grove" with Mika surviving, and goes on to tell the rest of the series through her eyes. There's a few other notable changes-- namely, Beth and Carl live-- but otherwise I've tried not to color too far outside the lines. Also messing with the show's timeline a bit-- in general, I wanted there to be more downtime between major events.
> 
> I have 8 chapters of this drafted so far, so planning on roughly once-a-week updates at least for the time being.
> 
> Title from "All Flowers In Time Bend Towards The Sun" by Jeff Buckley.

The last thing that Mika remembers before the big black hole in her memory is Judith screaming.

She remembers sitting on a picnic blanket, picking dandelions out of the grass while Judith crawled around in a sloppy circle. She remembers the sun on her face, and the sound of birds and the color green. Vibrant, beautiful green. It was pure summer, before any of the edges of it could start to brown.

And then Judith started screaming.

What happened next, Mika can only remember in flashes. The glint of a knife and a pair of worn-in cowgirl boots. Judith’s pink onesie and the blanket with stripes. The thing Lizzie said— _it’s okay, you can change_. And she was headed for…

Flashes. Tackling Lizzie. Slamming face-first into the ground and choking on dirt. The mingling tastes of earth and copper. Her own voice— _Lizzie stop, Lizzie don’t, Lizzie Lizzie_.

She remembers a searing burst of pain, remembers ribbons of red cutting all through the green. Her thoughts went rapid and desperate— _Mommy help me, Daddy I need you, it hurts it hurts please…_ She remembers seeing flowers in the grass. And then just black.

And screaming screaming screaming screaming.

——

Judith is still screaming when Mika wakes up. She is in a bed, wrapped in a faded old quilt and there’s light streaming in through the windows. It takes her eyes a moment to adjust, to see Tyreese is sitting in a rocking chair with Judith in his arms. She is screaming, screaming screaming… and then Mika stirs, and Judith immediately quiets.

Mika hurts everywhere. Her head is heavy and her throat is scratchy and her _stomach_. Her stomach feels even worse than it did that time in second grade when her appendix burst. Mika knows that she is not supposed to use this word, but she feels like _shit_.

It’s hard to speak but she gets out a whisper. “What’s going on?”

Tyreese yelps and calls for Carol, who rushes into the room gasping, breathless.

“Mika?” Carol exclaims. “Mika, oh god, you’re awake, thank god.”

Mika can’t quite put the pieces together. They are in the cottage. And Mika had been outside with Judith and they’d been in danger? Mika had needed to save her from… From what? She’d jumped in the way of, of… And then she’d gotten stabbed in the stomach?

Mika looks over at the baby, who is clean and rosy and quiet now. Whatever danger they were in, now it’s gone. Now they’re safe. Safe and sound and okay, except…

“Where’s Lizzie?”

The noise that Carol makes does not sound like crying. It’s more like when the walker’s heads come off, when their bodies fall to pieces. It seems like the longer they walk around, the more they turn from flesh and blood and bone to dirt and mud and mossy green. _Decaying_ , Mika thinks it’s called.

Tyreese speaks slow and even. “Mika, sweetie, Lizzie... Lizzie tried to kill you and Judith. We had to stop her. She’s gone.”

Gone. For one quick, awful, horrible, blissful moment, Mika feels relieved. _Finally_ , she thinks. _Finally_.

And then something else seizes control of her body, some unbearable pain that she does not have a name for. The noise that she makes is not like crying. It’s not like crying at all.

——

When Mika was five, she asked for a baby for Christmas. She wanted to be a big sister.

Her mom had laughed. “I don’t think Santa’s elves can gift-wrap babies,” she said. 

Mika got a baby doll instead. She named her Charlotte and carried her everywhere. She did everything you’d do with a real baby— dressed her, rocked her, sat her in a highchair at the breakfast table and held spoonfuls of cereal up to her mouth.

Lizzie played rough with her toys— not mean, just rough. She’d swing stuffed animals around by their ears and tangle her Barbies’ hair into knots. So when Mika found her in the playroom one day, holding Charlotte upside-down by the foot of her onesie and “feeding” her from a bottle full of sticky red juice, Mika freaked.

“Stop!” she shouted. “You’ll choke her!”

Lizzie blinked, confused. “I was just feeding her,” she says. “She was hungry. And anyway you can’t choke a doll.”

Mika didn’t care what Lizzie’s excuse was. “Just give her back.” Lizzie rolled her eyes.

“Fine, jeez.” 

She sort of shoved the baby doll back into Mika’s arms and stormed off. Mika fixed Charlotte’s onesie and held her close.

“I won’t ever let her hurt you again,” she declared.

Mika was eight when the dead started walking-- still a little girl, still young enough to play with dolls. Charlotte was the one she took with her when they left their apartment. Charlotte made it seven months into the apocalypse, past the bombs dropping on all the big cities, past trying to find Aunt Lisa in Tampa, past Kissimmee and Orlando. Past Mommy dying. Then one night they had to flee their car so quickly that all their things got left behind. 

Charlotte’s probably still there. Somewhere on the I-75, between Ocala and Gainsville. Locked in a car all alone. Mika thinks about it sometimes, and it feels like reaching into a little kid’s jewelry box, digging through all the clunky plastic pieces of her past.

So maybe that’s where Lizzie goes, when the leave her at the cottage. When Mika pushes her out of the corners of her mind and tries desperately to lock her away.

——

It turns out Mika had been unconscious for almost two days.

They stay at the cottage one more night, until Mika feels well enough to walk. And they move on. Mika has a bandage over the wound on her stomach, and they need to check it for infection sometimes and it _hurts_. But besides that she’s okay. They follow the train tracks. They find an old car seat in an abandoned van and take turns carrying Judith.

Judith is not the same as a baby doll, Mika knows, she looking after her still comes easily. She needs to be fed and changed and rocked to sleep. She needs to be handled with care.

At night when they set up camp, Mika huddles under Tyreese’s arm and tries to sleep. When she can’t, she gets up and goes to sit by the baby. Judith makes lots of noises, awake or asleep, just cute little gurgles bubbling from her mouth. Sometimes it almost seems like she’s trying to say something. Mika wonders how long it’ll be before she starts to speak.

“Did you like being a big brother?” she asks Tyreese one morning, when it’s her turn to carry the car seat. Judith is awake and happy and chewing her own foot.

“Most of the time,” Tyreese says, with a smile. Mika likes it when Ty smiles. His smile is soft and warm and fuzzy from his beard. “When Sasha wasn’t being bossy.”

 _Lizzie was bossy too_ , Mika thinks. _Lizzie screamed and cried and broke things when she didn’t get her way._ But she doesn’t say that out loud.

“Sasha’s still bossy,” she says instead. “But I like her anyway.”

——

They are deep in the woods when they hear something explode. The walkers hear it too, making a big clump as they lurch toward the sound. They find a cabin and a stranger setting off fireworks, and the next thing Mika knows Tyreese is holding a gun to the man’s head and Carol is covered in walker guts and promising to kill people.

Mika huddles in the corner of the cabin, Judith’s car seat in her arms. She wants desperately for the stranger to not see her, but he does.

“You got a name, kid?” he asks.

“Mika.”

“How about her?”

The wound in Mika’s side aches, and when she swallows there are knives in her throat. “Judith.”

He looks at Tyreese. “They your daughters or something?”

Tyreese, somehow, seems both larger and smaller than ever before, all at once. “They’re friends.”

“I don’t have any friends,” says the stranger. “Just the assholes that I stay alive with.”

The man says mean things, lots of mean things. He talks about saving children like it’s something awful and wrong. He tells Tyreese that they should run, they should kill him. He looks at Mika and smiles in a way that she does not like. Like his teeth are in his eyes.

“What do you think?” he asks. “He should kill me, right?” And Mika wants to scream but she can’t.

Outside the walkers are closing in, rattling and moaning and shaking the door. Tyreese gets up to check the lock and the stranger pounces, knocking Judith to the floor and grabbing Mika by the ribs. He claps his hands around her neck and Mika still can’t scream.

“Just one twist, man,” he says. “Don’t make me.”

He makes Tyreese leave the cabin, makes him go outside, where the walkers are. Judith is crying now, and the stranger drops Mika, goes to loom over the baby. He is panting and out of breath and there is a knife on the table and he picks it up—

and Mika sees red, sees green, sees her mother father _MommyDaddyLizzie_ —

She screams and then she tackles him straight to ground.

Tyreese bursts through the door moments later, grabs the stranger out from under Mika’s fists and into his own. He hits and punches until the stranger stops struggling.

Tyreese throws the body outside and then Mika crawls into his arms and cries.

——

So Terminus was not a sanctuary.

Mika's a little unclear on the details, but somehow a whole bunch of people from the prison wound up at Terminus, and then they were in danger and then Carol went and set the place on fire. They all got out-- Rick and Carl and Carol, Daryl, Sasha, Bob, Maggie and Glenn and some new people Mika doesn't know. They found Mika and Judith and Ty at the cabin, and now they're all travelling as one big group.

Daryl is the only one who will tell her what actually happened. That’s what’s great about Daryl— everyone else gives her excuses and kid-friendly-make-believe, but Daryl never sugar coats a thing.

“You know what a cannibal is, kid?” he says, when she sits down next to him at their campfire that night. The group has decided to stay for a bit at a church in the woods, the best shelter any of the them have in a while. There is water and food and a kind-of-nice priest, and they are feasting on Daryl-caught squirrels and canned vegetables.

Mika shakes her head. “Mm-mm.”

“S’a’person who eats people.”

“Eats people?”

“Yup,” Daryl says. “They were cannibals. Tried to eat us.”

“Eww!”

“Yup.” Daryl feeds a few leaves into the fire, takes a bite of his squirrel. “Hey, y’ever hear the story ‘bout Detective Clarice?”

“No.” 

Daryl nods at the church door. “Why’n’tcha get ready for bed and I’ll tell it to ya?”

“Bed” is a sleeping bag and a couple throw pillows, fluffed up haphazardly on one of the pews. Mika brushes her teeth and curls up on the pew, and Daryl tells her the story of Clarice Starling, the brave lady detective who defends the world from the evil cannibal Dr. Lecter. Mika is riveted. She hangs on his every word until she falls asleep.

Or almost falls asleep, at least. Because when everything else has gone quiet, Mika is awake enough to hear Daryl and Carol whispering.

“You told her _The Silence of the Lambs_ as a _bedtime story_?”

“Yeah, so? The kid likes stories, thought everybody knew that. An’ I didn’t tell it too dark, gave it a happy endin’ and shit.”

“Yes, but—“

Mika can’t hear what Carol says next, but she can hear Daryl kick the pew in front of him. 

“Oh, shit. Carol, I’m sorry, I didn’t—“

“It’s okay, you didn’t know.”

“And Judith too?”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus, fuck... How old is she again?”

“Ten.”

“Fuckin’ a, ten years old, shouldn’t be seeing that shit.”

Mika can’t sleep, so she tries counting sheep but the sheep are all screaming.

—— 

The cannibals find them, and there is a bloody, awful showdown, and Mika tries not to watch, she really does. She takes Judith and hides in the tiniest corner she can find, tries to block the whole thing out for both of them. But she still sees. She sees Rick and Sasha and Michonne cutting bodies into pieces and she _knows_ the cannibals are the bad guys, but it still makes her wants to cry. Bob dies in Father Gabriel’s bed, and Tyreese digs one-too-many-graves.

Carol is not here. She and Daryl have just up and disappeared, and it is making Mika angry. Isn’t Carol supposed to be the one looking after her? That’s what Daddy wanted, anyway. 

Mika sits on the front steps of the church, trying to silently fume the way teenagers do on tv. She wants to be tough and cool, one of those girls who wears black nail polish and watches scary movies without flinching. She wants to be Detective Clarice Starling.

But Tyreese sits down next to her, smiling in that soft gentle way of his and holding a stack of books. “Found these in the church library,” he says. “You said you liked science class, so I thought they might be up your alley.”

He holds out the top book on the pile— a DK Eyewitness book about weather. Mika actually gasps.

“Science books!” she exclaims. She throws her arms around him. “Thank you, thank you, thank you!”

“No problem, kiddo,” he says. “Y’know, I don’t know too much about science. Think you could teach me?”

So Mika opens up the book and tells him everything she knows about the weather, and then all about butterflies and killer whales and how plants grow.

“And did you know that mushrooms aren’t really vegetables?” she asks.

Tyreese’s eyebrows scrunch up. “They’re not?”

“Mm-mm. They’re _funguses_.”

Maggie is sitting few feet away, listening in with a quiet smile. “Fungi,” she corrects. She winks, and Mika isn’t angry anymore. 

——

When Daryl shows up again, he is with a teenage boy named Noah— and Noah knows where Beth and Carol are. They are trapped in Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, and as soon as Noah finishes his story the group begins to make a rescue plan.

Tyreese, Rick, Sasha and Daryl accompany Noah back into the city. Mika stays behind, with Carl and Judith and Michonne. The church was damaged when the cannibals came, so they work on fixing it.

But their bad luck hasn’t run out yet. Just a few hours after their friends leave, the church is swarmed by a horde of walkers. It’s too many to fight off, so they escape through a tunnel Father Gabriel had dug, and trap the walkers inside of the building. No one’s hurt, but now they’ve got no place to stay.

What they do have is a fire truck. And Abraham, one of the new people, who is very good at driving it. So they pile in and head for Atlanta.

Mika doesn’t want to admit it, but she is a little shaken from the walker attack. It just seems like it never stops. First the prison, then the cottage, now this. They might never have a place to call home again. She climbs into the truck and slumps down on a seat. She manages to keep herself from crying, but not from sniffling a bit too loud.

It makes Abraham turn to look at her. “You alright there?”

“Yeah,” Mika says. “I’m okay.” But Abraham sees right through her.

“The walkers scare you?” he asks. Mika shrugs.

“Maybe a little. But I’m trying to start being brave.”

“Start?” Abraham raises one thick red eyebrow. “What do you mean _start_? I saw you keepin’ that baby safe from those Terminus bastards. I think you’re plenty brave.”

She was cowering in fear in the corner. Mika’s not sure that anyone else would count that as brave. But it’s nice of him to try and make her feel better. She shrugs again. “Thanks.”

Abraham gestures towards the seat next to him. “Wanna come sit up here in front? The view’s better.”

“I’m ten, isn’t it against the law?” Mika says.

Abraham smiles—his smile is warm and fuzzy through his mustache. It's a good smile. “The law?” he says. “Didn’t you hear? The world ended, there’s no laws anymore.”

And so Mika climbs into the front seat, and watches out the window all the way to Atlanta. He’s right—the view is better up here.

——

They make it to the city, and reunite with the rest of their group. Carol and Beth are both a little worse for wear— Carol got hit by a _car_ , and Beth took a bullet graze to the side of her head—but they’ll be alright. Maggie hugs Beth for what seems like hours, and Mika feels a pang where her appendix should be.

Noah has a bit of good news—he’s from a community in Richmond, Virginia, and he’s pretty sure it’ll be safe there. So they load up their van and drive north.

Mika is overjoyed to see Beth again. They were good friends back at the prison—Mika loved helping with Judith—and Beth’s the one who taught her how to do a mini-braid in her hair. Mika’s pretty sure that Beth’s actually a princess in disguise, because she is kind and fair and patient and when she sings it sounds like Cinderella. She hopes she’ll be even half-as-cool as Beth is when she grows up.

As for the new people: Rosita is pretty but scary, and Noah’s a little quiet but really nice. Eugene is kind of weird— like, talks in math problems and doesn’t really smile. But he knows everything about chemistry and doesn’t get impatient when Mika wants to ask a bunch of questions, so he’s okay in her book.

Tara is great. She is funny and cheerful and she makes up games whenever things get boring, like at summer camp. She used to have a little niece named Meghan, she says, and Meghan was so good at games that Tara always had to find ways to make them harder. And Mika knows that “used to have” means that Meghan is dead, but Tara never says anything about what happened to her.

And then there’s Abraham. Abraham, Mika has decided, is the absolute coolest person in the whole entire world. He is _amazing_. He’s a million feet tall, he has no inside voice, he knows how to blow stuff up and he cusses more than anyone Mika’s ever met. He gives Mika piggyback rides and lets her sit in the front seat whenever he drives. Mika likes everything about him.

Including his relationship with Rosita. Rosita might be kind of scary, but she and Abraham are always making each other smile. Mika loves seeing people in love— she and her mom used to be die-hard _Bachelorette_ fans.

“When you get married,” Mika starts, early one morning as she helps Rosita gather firewood. That’s the other thing about Rosita— she never gives Mika little kid versions of jobs, she just asks her to help out and trusts that she can do it. “Can I be your flower girl?”

Rosita’s mouth drops open, half-shocked and half-smiling. “Married? Who said anything about me getting married?”

Mika shrugs. “You and Abraham are in love and when people are in love they get married. And I’ve never been a flower girl before.”

Rosita laughs, covering her mouth with her hand as a light pink flush spreads on her face. Mika think she’s never looked prettier.

“ _Chiquita_ ,” she says, “you can absolutely be my flower girl. Whenever it is that I get married”

The trip north takes a few weeks, as they move by foot and by car, across highways and train tracks, through untamed woods. They camp outside or find shelter where they can, eating canned beans and whatever it is Daryl manages to catch. They take turns carrying Judith. It’s hard, they’re all tired and hungry and cold at night. But they’re all together, and that makes it okay.

And then they make it to Virginia, and it isn’t what they’d expected. Noah’s town is abandoned and broken, windows shattered on all of the houses, trash and branches and body parts littering the streets. There are walkers— there’s _a_ walker, and Tyreese doesn’t have enough time to run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! ♡♡ Hope you are enjoying the story. Comments are appreciated if you're able!


	2. The Girl In The Well

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Thank you to everyone who's read so far and helped this story get off to a great start. Happy reading and hope you are all doing well ♡

When Mika was little, everyone told her that she looked just like her dad. They were both short with brown eyes and round faces, cheeks as full and pink as apples and dimples whenever they smiled. Daddy’s hair was darker now, but in pictures of him as a little boy it was just as golden blond as hers.

Lizzie looked more like their mom— tall and loose-limbed and pretty, angular faces and clear, ice-blue eyes. Somehow they looked both alike and very different— sisters who could never be mistaken for each other but could always be compared.

Mika cannot remember a time when Lizzie wasn’t, well, _Lizzie_. When she didn’t need everything to be just Lizzie’s way, didn’t destroy the house and then scream about how it wasn’t in order. 

Once, when Mika was in preschool, the class did a project where they made their own picture books, and they put an “About the Author” page at the end. Mika dictated hers to the teacher, trying to talk like the way a real book sounded.

“Mika Samuels is five years old. She lives in Tallahassee, Florida with her mommy and daddy. Mika has a sister, too, but sometimes she screams—“

The teacher stopped writing mid-sentence. “Oh, no,” she said. “Everyone else is only saying nice things about their sisters.”

Mika thought quickly for something nice to say. “One time she gave me the last pink ice cream,” she came up with.

The teacher typed up everyone’s “About the Author” pages, glued them to bright pieces of construction paper and let the kids put a photo on top. Mika’s speech sat in the back of her hand-drawn fairy tale, weird syntax error and all:

“Mika has a sister, but sometimes she— one time she gave me the last pink ice cream.”

Mika doesn’t why they picked "look at the flowers". Lately she thinks maybe they should’ve been staring at knives.

——

They bury Tyreese in an open field. They have a priest now, so they treat it like a real funeral, with eulogies and bible quotes and everything. They never did that back at the prison. 

Mika cries and cries until she doesn’t anymore, until she’s pretty sure she has cried all the water right out of her body. _The human body is seventy percent water_ , she thinks, and maybe that means there’s just thirty percent left of her.

Carol lays a hand on her shoulder, offers her a fragile smile. “Want to come some pick flowers with me? We can mark the grave with them. And it’ll be good practice, for when you’re Rosita’s flower girl.”

Mika shakes her head and shrugs Carol’s hand away. She’s changed her mind— she doesn’t want be a flower girl anymore. She doesn’t ever want to see another flower as long as she lives.

——

They’ve got nowhere to go but no choice to keep going. So they keep walking north.

It’s not long before they’re low on food and water, before they’re all so drained that they can hardly keep their heads up. They shuffle along the roads slow as slugs. Mika’s sneakers have holes in them, and she’s not sure how long they’ll last.

No one will say this out loud— not when Mika’s around, anyway— but Mika’s not stupid. She knows that if they can’t find safety soon they are all going to die.

Carol alternates between babying her and pushing her— between “Mika, sweetheart, let me tie your shoes for you,” and “You need to walk faster, we can’t afford to wait.” Mika’s not sure which she one she hates more.

Abraham, though, he _gets_ her. He knows just how to nudge her along without making her feel bad about it. “Hurry up, Little Lady,” he’ll tease. “Unless you want me to drape you around my neck like a scarf.”

“You’d look silly in a scarf,” Mika replies, and Abe puffs up his chest.

“I look excellent in scarves, thank you very much. Mittens and puffy coats too. I’m like the Michelin Man but better lookin’.” He always makes Mika giggle.

Then one day they get a miracle— it rains. And not just a little rain. It _pours_. The sky opens up and pummels down on them, filling all their water bottles and soaking them all straight to their bones. Michonne starts laughing first, and then Carol, and then it's like dominoes. They're all laughing and smiling, and Tara and Rosita lie right down on the pavement and make water angels. Abraham picks Mika up and swings her through the air like she weighs nothing at all.

The storm picks up and they hide inside an old barn. Mika sits with Carl, while Sasha takes watch and the rest of the grown-ups talk or curl up in corners to sleep. They’re both soggy from the rain, droplets falling from the brim of Carl’s hat. Mika pulls one of her science books out of her backpack.

“Did you know that on some planets, rain isn’t made of water?” Mika asks.

“No,” Carl says. “What’s it made of?”

“Depends on the planet,” Mika replies. “On what’s in their atmosphere and stuff. On one of Saturn’s moon, it rains methane.”

Carl raises an eyebrow. “Is methane like _meth_?”

Mika giggles. “No, it’s _car gas._ ”

“That’s _wack_.”

Carl leans back, his hat titled just over his face. “I’ve been meaning to say thanks, by the way,” he says. “For taking care of my sister when I couldn’t.”

Mika shrugs. “You’re welcome.” Carl taps a rhythm against the ground with his feet, and in the high drafty walls of the barn every sound echoes.

“I’m sorry about yours,” he says.

Mika can hear the rain thud hard against the ceiling, hear the heavy winds whistle and blow. She looks down at her book, and traces a picture of a hurricane with her finger. People give names to hurricanes. People give names to monsters.

“Don’t be,” Mika says, and even she is surprised by it.

——

After what happened with the Terminus man, Mika is wary of strangers. So when Sasha brings a curly haired man to the barn, she completely understands why the first thing Rick does is knock him unconscious.

The man’s name is Aaron, and he says to knows a safe place they can go. For a while everyone yells and argues, and then finally Maggie and Glenn go out and find Aaron’s RV. Rick decides they will follow this Aaron guy at least part of the way, and so they all pile into the van and get back on the road.

Carol bombards her with prodding and questions, as usual. “Mika, honey, do you want a blanket?” and “Have you eaten today?” and “Is it too dark for you ?” She seems to think Mika’s scared.

Mika isn’t scared. “No, I’m okay,” she says. She sits down at the camper’s little table, next to Daryl and across from Beth.

Daryl gives her a funny look. “Don’t wanna go sit with Carol?” he asks.

“Nope,” Mika says. “Can you tell me another scary story?”

Beth is suddenly grinning. “Wait, you told her a scary story?” 

Beth got pretty hurt back at the hospital—grazed by a bullet and hit her head hard on the way down. She’s had terrible headaches almost every day since, and Maggie thinks it’s probably a concussion. She tries to be cheerful, but they can all tell the last few weeks have been tough on her.

But she smiles, _really_ smiles, whenever she’s with Daryl. And lately it seems like she’s always with Daryl.

Daryl rubs his forehead. “It was _Silence of the Lambs_ ,” he tells Beth. “And, I dunno kid, Carol thought the scary ones might give ya nightmares.”

“Well, they don’t,” Mika says. Nothing gives Mika nightmares these days. Though that’s mostly because Mika barely sleeps.

Daryl throws a wayward glance at Carol, who is sitting quietly on the other side of the RV. Mika tugs at his sleeve. “Please, Daryl, pleeeassee.”

“Yeah, Daryl, pleeeasseee,” Beth chimes in. There’s a gleam like fireworks in her eyes... And suddenly Mika thinks she might understand what’s going on.

Mika pretends she doesn’t feel it when Daryl kicks Beth under the table. “Can’t fuckin’ say no to you,” he grumbles. He clears his throat and gives Mika a mock-serious glare.

“Alright, how ‘bout this. Once upon a goddamn time...”

And so Daryl tells them a story about a nice newspaper writin’ lady named Naomi Watts who finds a video tape with a ghost inside. The ghost likes to call people up on the phone and say _seven days seven dayssss_. And then seven days later you die. And Naomi’s has got a little boy and he’s the worst kinda person to have in a story like this, ‘cause he never goddamn listens to his mama, right? The kid’s even stupid enough to watch the dumb-ass tape, so now Naomi’s gotta chase down the ghost before the seven days are up and—

Daryl is telling this story when the car in front of them crashes, and the RV skids off of the road.

——

_“So this ghost. Her name was Samara. She died ‘cause she fell down a well.”_

Mika falls from the bench to the floor of the RV and then everything goes black.

She is wholly engulfed by the darkness. Can’t see, can’t hear, can’t anything. Her stomach hurts so bad that she thinks she might throw up. 

She skitters to all fours, crawls in circles like a mouse in a trap. She tries to stand but she hits something— some kind of wall, something cold and slimy and rough. She thinks that it might be brick, that it might be the walls of a well, might be covered in moss, might be soaking and drenched from the storm. She wants to scream but she can’t open her mouth.

Then she hears noises. First it’s the rain— _drip drip drip, plip plip plop._ Then it’s birds, the big kind— ravens, crows, things that croak and caw and shriek. Then it’s footsteps. She’d ask who’s there but her mouth, she thinks it’s all sewn shut.

The footsteps are coming towards her, closer faster louder. Someone starts laughing. Somebody is—

_Judith is screaming, and the sun is too bright in her eyes and the grass is too green, dandelions too yellow, and screaming screaming screaming Mika can hardly see what she’s doing, but the knife glints and—_

“Lizzie stop! Stop it! Lizzie! Lizzie!”

Somebody grabs her, and Mika snaps back to reality. Daryl caught her and he holds her tight in his arms. “It’s okay,” he says. “S’okay. Car just tipped a little. S’fine now.”

Mika gives a shaky nod. Daryl slowly lets go and Mika glances around the RV. All the furniture and decorations have shifted, thrown out of place by the van’s sudden swerve. A few plates lie in shards on the floor. Judith is crying, as Carl bounces and shushes her. But everyone’s there. Everyone’s fine.

Carol takes a step towards her. “Mika, sweetie—”

But Mika doesn’t care. She doesn’t even try to be polite about it. She just shakes her head violently and runs, towards the driver’s seat and straight to Abe.

_“No, Daryl, that’s not how it goes. She didn’t fall. Her step-mother pushed her.”_

_“Goddamn it, Carl, you gonna give away the end?”_

——

Everything’s okay. No one is hurt, and they find Rick and Glenn and Michonne without trouble. They spend the night in an empty store and they meet Aaron’s boyfriend. Mika likes Eric immediately— he is smiley and sweet and she likes seeing people in love.

The grown-ups seem to like him too, because suddenly all of the fear and suspicion is gone. They trust Aaron, and they are going to his community. They’re going to a safe place.

They’re going home.


	3. A is for Alexandria

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's the full moon as I'm posting this, so happy full moon everyone! Welcome to Alexandria and happy reading~~

_“Is okay if I record this, sweetheart?”_

_“Um, okay. I mean, yes ma’am.”_

_“Oh, you don’t need to call me ma’am. Can you say your name for the camera?”_

_“Um, I’m Mika. Mika Jane Samuels.”_

_“And how old are you, Mika?”_

_“Almost eleven.”_

_“So you must’ve been in... third grade? Before this started?”_

_“That’s right.”_

_“Did you know any of your group before?”_

_“No, ma’am. I met them at the prison.”_

_“So your mom and dad—“_

_“They didn’t make it. My sister either.”_

_“I’m so sorry to hear that.”_

_“It’s okay.”_

_——_

Alexandria looks like it belongs in one of those old sitcoms that Mika used to watch with her grandma— _Happy Days_ or _Leave it to Beaver_. Everything is nice and perfect and clean, and there’s a church and a clock tower and a big pond. The houses all have shutters and porches.

The town's leader, Deanna, gives them two houses, Numbers 97 and 101. Mika lives in Number 101, with Rick, Carol, Daryl, Carl, Michonne and Judith. There aren’t quite enough rooms for everyone to have their own, so she and Carl have to share and Judith’s crib goes in a tiny room that might actually be a closet. Daryl sleeps in the attic, or that’s what he says anyway. Mika has noticed that he sneaks out every night.

The days go almost like they did before the world ended. All the grown-ups have been given jobs, and Mika goes to school from eight until noon. The kids— preschool through sixth grade— crowd into a garage that's been brightly decorate and furnished with desks and a big white board. A one-room schoolhouse, like in pioneer times. They have one teacher and Beth. The teacher does her best to come up with group lessons, but they spend a lot of time just working out of textbooks. 

After school Mika eats lunch with Beth and then walks home. Carl and the other teenagers go to school in the afternoon, so Mika has their shared room to herself for a few hours. She reads or draws or plays with Judith. Mostly she’s bored.

Carol's always asking her to help in the kitchen, or offering to play board games or go for walks. Sometimes Mika says yes. But Carol is acting _weird._ She dresses in flowery shirts and talks all high-pitched and pretends that she doesn’t even know how to shoot a gun. She’s in the kitchen at all hours, cooking and baking and humming. When they go out, she smiles too wide and fusses over everything that Mika does. _Oh honey, let me fix your buttons, let me hold your hand. How was school today? Goodness, how’d you get to be so smart?_ Mika doesn’t like it at all.

Dinner's something of an informal, communal affair. Whoever feels like cooking will pitch in a dish, and whoever feels like eating will show up. Their group flows in and out of Number 97 with its big sunny kitchen and breakfast nook. Mika likes to sit next to Abe and ask him all about his job with the construction team. Sometimes she even has helpful advice, like when Abe tells her about a re-rooted apple tree that won’t take.

“Maybe it’s sick,” Mika says. “Do the leaves have orange spots on them? That’s cedar rust.”

Abe is beaming with pride when she gets to dinner the next day. She slides into her chair and he claps her on the back.

“Little Lady, you were right about the cedar rust,” he says. “Damn that sharp little brain, you’re gonna be doin’ my job by the time you’re twelve.”

After dinner Mika helps with the dishes. Then she reads for a while, or goofs off with Carl until Michonne bangs on their door and tells them to shut up and go to sleep. They turn out the lights and Mika climbs into her bed.

And she tosses and turns and she stares at ceiling, listens to the crickets outside and she can’t sleep, she can’t ever sleep.

——

At school Mika sits next to Sam Anderson. He is ten like her, but sometimes Mika thinks he seems younger. He’s okay at math but not so good at reading. When they do assignments together he can’t always keep up.

He asks Mika lots of questions. “How do you spell Virginia?” he’ll say. Or “Does this mean to do a percent or a fraction?” or “Was Thomas Jefferson the television guy?”

“You’re thinking of Thomas Edison,” Mika answers, trying hard to be patient. “And he invented the telephone, not the television. Thomas Jefferson was the third president.”

Sam pops his tongue against his cheek. “Oh, yeah. Thanks.” He picks up his pen. “Wait, how do you spell Edison?”

Over a tuna fish sandwich lunch, Mika spills her guts to Beth. “He’s so stupid!” she exclaims. “And he’s boring, he has nothing to say.”

“Hey, it’s not nice to call people stupid,” Beth chides. “And Sam is trying his best. You’re right, he’s not as advanced as you. Truth is he might need extra tutoring or specialized materials. But we gotta make do with what we can.”

Beth is correct, even if Mika doesn’t want to admit it. She takes a resigned bite of her sandwich. “He’s still boring,” she says.

“Well, have you asked him what he likes to do?”

So Mika tries that. “I like video games,” Sam says. “And Legos and trucks. And I make sculptures with my mom.”

Mika doesn’t know anything about video games or Legos or trucks. But sculptures sound kind of cool. “Can I come over and see them sometime?”

So Mika goes over to the Anderson’s house the next afternoon and rings the bell. Sam’s mom opens the door “Mika! Hi!” she exclaims.

Mika met Jessie at the party back when they first arrived, but she hasn’t really talked to her since. She’s pretty, with red-blonde hair and scuffed up-boots and a bunch of tattoos. Mika’s never met a mom with tattoos before. “It’s nice to see you again, Mrs. Anderson,” she says.

Jessie waves a hand. “Oh, please, just call me Jessie,” she says. “Mrs. Anderson makes me sound like an old lady.” 

She calls for Sam, and then shows Mika around to the garage, where are piles and piles of wood planks and scrap metal. Something twisted and tall stands in the middle. Mika tilts her head at is. “Is it a chicken?” 

Jessie laughs, and Mika thinks she has a nice laugh. “It’s an owl,” she says. “But no one seems to see that. Maybe calling it a chicken would be better.”

Sam joins them, and Jessie shows Mika how the sculptures work— how to heat up the metal just enough to twist it, which tools you need to screw new pieces on. It reminds Mika of an exhibit she saw at the Children’s Museum in Miami, about how to smooth pieces of glass with just sand and pressurized air.

After a while they go inside, and Sam and Mika sit down in the kitchen for a snack. “Your mom’s nice,” she says.

“Thanks,” Sam replies. He dunks a carrot into ranch dressing. “Your mom’s kind of scary.”

Mika’s brow furrows up. “My mom?” she asks.

Sam crunches his carrot. “Yeah. Your mom. The cookie lady.”

It takes Mika a long moment to realize that he’s talking about Carol. “Carol’s not my mom,” she says.

Sam looks at her blankly. “Oh. Okay. But the police guy’s your dad, right?”

Mika sucks on a celery stick, ‘till the strings get stuck in her teeth. “No. I’m an orphan.”

It isn’t until later that night that she realizes it’s the first time she’s said that out loud.

——

_“Your friends tell me you’re a very smart girl. That you love to read.”_

_“Oh, yeah! Definitely.”_

_“Any favorite books?”_

_“Um, Charlotte’s Web. And A Series of Unfortunate Events. The Borrowers, The Tale of Despereux, The Boxcar Children, Harry Potter... I’m a Hufflepuff.”_

_“Are you now?”_

_“Mm-hmm.”_

_“I love to read too. I’ve read all the books in this room.”_

_“Really?”_

_“Well, maybe not all of them. But I tell myself that so I don’t have to feel guilty when I get more."_

_“We had a great library back at the prison.”_

_“Did you spend a lot of time there?”_

_“Yeah. We... I was reading Tom Sawyer.”_

——

There are perks, it turns out, to staying up all night.

Mika figures out quickly that Carl sleeps like he’s dead, and as soon as he’s out she can do pretty much anything she wants. At first, “anything she wants” just means turning her beside lamp back on and reading until she finally passes out. But as the days go on and on and she still can’t sleep, Mika starts to gets adventurous.

_Detective Mika Starling, on the case._

_Mission One_ : _Find out where Daryl goes at night._

That one turns out to be pretty easy. She hides under the staircase until she feels footsteps, then tails him as he creeps out the door. He does not go far. He goes to the back door of Number 102, knocks exactly twice and waits. When the door opens it's Beth, and she takes him inside— but not until after they make out on the steps like they’re in that _Notebook_ movie. Mika grins like a fiend the first time she catches them— she was right! She knew it! She knew they were in love! 

_Mission Two: Touch Michonne’s sword._

In theory this _shouldn’t_ be hard. The sword is right there in living room, all she has to is reach it. But Mika is far too short for that. She tries standing on a chair but it’s still not enough.

It takes a stack of the chair, three hardcover books and an overturned cake pan, a precarious tower that threatens to crash down and give her away, but Mika manages to get a hand around the sword. The katana, Michonne says it called. 

And it's weird. Hanging up above the fireplace, the katana doesn't look or feel at all like a weapon. It's just a piece of art, shiny and architectural. You’d never know that Michonne had killed dozens of walkers with it.

_Mission Three: Climb the lookout post._

This soon becomes Mika’s obsession. The lookout post isn’t as tall as the clock tower, but it’s still pretty high up, and it’s got a great view of the woods. Mika would very much like to see it.

But the grown-ups all take turns keeping watch, and the post is never empty long enough for Mika to even attempt climbing up. She spends a few nights hiding in the bushes for hours at a time, watching Sasha and Daryl and Spencer and Glenn trade places at the top, shaking hands or nodding quiet acknowledgement as they come and go.

Then one night she finally gets her chance. It’s about eleven-thirty, almost time for the midnight shift change. Deanna’s son— Aiden, she thinks his name is— is on duty, and he doesn’t seem to like it much. He paces around the little wooden box, smokes and spits and fidgets. He climbs halfway down the ladder, jumps the rest and walks off. He doesn’t come back.

For the first time since Mika’s started sneaking out, the post is completely empty. She dashes for it, fast as she can. She has to do this before the next guard shows up. She scrambles up the ladder until she’s almost there.

But the ladder has not been designed with ten-year-old girls in mind. The rungs are spaced just a little bit unevenly, just a little too far apart, and suddenly she’s stuck. She tries to go up but she can’t reach, tries to go down but her foot only dangles. She holds the rung to her chest with both hands, like a pull-up, until she starts to shake.

Mika is staring at the ground, trying to figure out how bad it’ll hurt if she just lets herself drop, when suddenly she hears a voice:

“Mika? Having fun up there?”

It’s Glenn. He stands directly below the ladder, looking up at Mika with a bemused smile. Mika tries to smile back.

“Um, yeah, it’s great,” she says. “But I think... maybe I could use some help?”

Glenn smiles and places his sneaker on the bottom rung. “Just stay there. I’ll come get you.”

He climbs up and grabs Mika by the waist, holding her as she hauls herself up the last few feet. Mika flops stomach-first into the floor, and Glenn slides in after her.

“Didn’t know we were giving overnight shifts to kids now,” he jokes.

Mika bites her bottom lip. “It was Aiden’s turn,” she admits. “But he went somewhere.”

“Went somewhere?” Glenn makes a noise of disgust. “Piece of shit, he knows he isn’t supposed to leave until his cover comes.”

“Maybe he forgot,” Mika suggests. Glenn raises an eyebrow.

“And what about you? Did you forget your bedtime?”

“Yeah,” Mika says. “I mean, no, I mean, I just wanted to see what its like up here, I couldn’t sleep and—“

Glenn laughs. “It’s alright, I’m just teasing you. I understand. I stay up late too. Always have.”

“It’s okay if I stay for a bit?” Mika asks.

“Of course. I’d love the company.” 

Mika stands on her tiptoes and peers out over the fence. The view is even better than she expected— an endless panorama of trees, lush and velvet green and studded with fireflies. She feels the gentle breeze, hears the murmurs of crickets and night-birds.

“What do you think?” Glenn asks. “Worth it?”

“Definitely.” 

Glenn leans into his elbows on the railing, lets out a little yawn. It makes Mika realize just how tired she is, too. “Why can’t you sleep?” she asks.

“I can,” Glenn tells her. “I just don’t, a lot of the time. I like it at night. It’s quiet. Maggie’s the opposite, she’s always up at the crack of dawn.”

That sounds horrible. Mika hates mornings so much that she's thinking of starting to drink coffee. She stuffs her hands into her pocket, looks up at the smile of the moon.

“Beth and Daryl are having sex,” she blurts out suddenly. “Or I think they are, anyways. He sneaks into your house every night and they suck face in the yard.”

“Suck face?” Glenn repeats. “Is that what they... where’d you learn to call it that?” His expression’s all crooked, and Mika feels a pulse of shame. Like maybe it was supposed to be a secret.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—"

But Glenn just laughs again. “Oh, we know,” he says. “We’ve known for weeks. Just waiting for them to spit it out.”

Mika’s exhaustion is starting to burn her eyes. She leans her head against Glenn's shoulder.

“Did you have siblings?” she asks.

“I did. Three sisters.”

“Older or younger?”

“Both. One older, two younger. They were twins.”

“I’ve never met any twins...” Mika murmurs. Her eyes droop, and she feels herself start to drift off. She wakes up in her bed the morning but doesn’t remember ever walking home.

——

Somehow they've been here a month and Mika still hasn't met Sam's dad. Then one day she skins her knee bad on the makeshift playground outside the school-garage, and she finally needs a trip to the infirmary.

The infirmary is actually just a house that's been partly refurbished. It looks more like a school nurse's office than a real hospital. Mika hops up on the examination table and lets Dr. Anderson take a look at her knee.

"It's a bleeder for sure, but it's nothing to worry about," he says. "Does it hurt?"

"Stings a little," Mika says.

"A little is better than a lot," he replies. He washes the wound off and dabs on some anti-septic, which unfortuntately makes the stinging worse. Mika breaths in through her teeth and he gives her a small, sympathetic wince.

"Sorry about that."

Dr. Anderson picks up a roll of white gauze bandage and cuts off a piece. "You'll want to leave it covered for a day or so," he tells her. "And let me know if starts looking yellow or green, that's could be—"

"An infection," Mika finishes for him. "But don't worry, I've already had my tetanus shot."

Dr. Anderson chuckles a little. Not a lot. "Good to hear," he says.

He's wrapping the bandage around her knee when the door opens, and Jessie walks. "Hey, Pete, have you—" She stop mid-sentence when she sees Mika. "Bad time?"

"No, it's fine. Just cleaning a skinned knee," Dr. Anderson says. "What is it?"

Jessie adjusts her sweater. "Um, I was just wondering if you knew where the bolt cutters were?"

Dr. Anderson's head seems to snap in her direction. "Why do you need those?"

"Just... For a sculpture. Sam. Sam and I were..."

And Mika watches as Jessie starts wringing her hands, and rubs hard at the tattoo on her wrist. She can't quite put her finger on it, but there is something about this moment that she does not like. Dr. Anderson finishes with the bandage, and Mika finds herself holding her breath.

He pats her on the un-injured knee and stands up. "I'll find them for you," he tells Jessie. He gives Mika a nod as they start to leave.

"You take care, Mika."

"Yeah," Mika says. And when she looks down at her bandage, it's already stained dark red.

——

“Did you make cookies again?”

It’s a slow-moving Thursday afternoon, and Mika walks into the house to find that the kitchen smells like chocolate and bread. Carol is at the sink, washing dishes.

“I did,” she says. “Your friend Sam helped, actually.”

Mika’s still not sure she wants to call Sam her friend. “Oh. Is still here?”

“Just missed him.”

Mika climbs into one of the tall counter chairs, lays the book she’s been reading out in front of her. It’s a good one— all about coral reefs. “What kind of cookies?”

“Chocolate chip,” Carol says. “Or as close as I can get to that.” She dries her hands on a dish towel, turns around to check whatever’s in the oven. Her eyes fall on Mika’s book.

“You know, you might like baking,” she says. “There’s a lot of science in it.”

Mika’s ears perk up. “There is?”

“Absolutely,” Carol tells her. “See, with cooking— if you’re making, say, a salad or a roast chicken, then the rules aren’t very strict. You can add ingredients or take them out, the worst that could happens is it won’t taste as good. But with _baking_... Well, did you ever make a baking soda and vinegar volcano?”

Mika loves those. “Yeah.”

“Baking’s like that,” Carol says. “When you mix certain ingredients and put them in a hot oven, a whole bunch of chemical reactions happen. So you have to measure everything, make sure it’s just right, otherwise...”

“Otherwise it might _explode_?”

Carol’s eyebrows tilt. “I’ve seen it happen.”

Mika smiles. “That does sounds really cool.”

Carol pats her on the shoulder. “If you ever want to learn, let me know.” She looks over at the pile of dishes.

“Do you think... Could you finish those for me?” she asks. She picks the words slow, careful. Like they aren’t really what she means. “I have some errands to run.”

“Yeah, of course.”

Carol smiles, and it’s just as slow as her words. “Thanks, honey. Don’t know what I’d do without you.”

She grabs a jacket and heads for the door. Once she’s gone, Mika starts on the dishes. There is cookie dough still molded onto some of the silverware, and Mika licks a spoon. Carol was right— it’s chocolate chip, but only almost.

——

That same night, Glenn and Eugene come back from a run with bad news: Tara is injured and Noah is gone.

Aiden didn’t make it either. Nicholas, the other runner, says it Glenn’s fault. But there’s no way it’s Glenn’s fault. They all know that.

They have a funeral the next day. Mika doesn’t cry as much as she did when it was Tyreese, but she still cries.

The whole group eats dinner together, and they are all upset. Glenn keeps muttering cuss words under his breath, and Maggie fusses over Beth until Beth just up and leaves the table. Daryl follows her, doesn’t even try to hide it. Mika tries to eat but she can’t get much down. She twirls her spaghetti on her fork, round and round until the noodles are all broken.

Afterwards she sits on the couch, holding a weather-worn copy of the third Harry Potter but not really reading it. The dishes are all still on the table and nobody bothers to clear them.

Suddenly someone’s holding a mug in her face. “Hey, little lady. Got you something.” It’s Abraham. The mug is full of hot chocolate, and on the top there's— 

Mika’s eyes widen. “Whipped cream and marshmallows?” 

“Found some in storage,” he say. “Thought my best girl could use a treat.”

Abraham sits down next to her, the couch shifting a little under the added weight. He’s got his own mug of hot chocolate in hand, and he nods at her book.

“Whatch’ya got there?”

Mika shrugs. “Oh, it’s just Harry Potter.”

He looks at the cover. “Azkaban, huh? That’s a good one.”

“You know it?” she asks. It’s a silly question, really— everyone knows Harry Potter. But somehow Mika still wasn’t expecting Abraham to know Harry Potter.

Abe leans back, massive hands behind his massive head. “Oh yeah. I've read the whole series at least twice.”

“Wow.” Mika looks him up and down, mouth curving into a sly smile. 

“Gryffindor,” she says. “Right?”

“You betch’yer damn l’il ass. Handsome ginger like me? Where else could I possibly belong? And my daughter thinks I must be half-giant, like Hagrid.”

It catches them both by surprise. “I didn’t know you had a daughter,” Mika says.

Abraham takes a while to answer. “I did. Becca. She was your age.”

Mika doesn’t ask him what happened to her. She never asks that about anyone anymore— not about Tara’s niece or Glenn’s sisters or Carl’s mom. There’s just no reason to ask— someone says they used to have somebody and it always means the same thing. 

She runs a finger over the raised letters of the title. Azkaban. A place you never wanna go. She looks up at Abe.

“Was she a Gryffindor too?”

Abraham smiles. “That she was.” 

He takes a sip of his hot chocolate, and it leaves whipped cream in his moustache.

——

The next few days seem to pass in a fog. Everyone is sad or on-edge and nothing seems to make sense. The only thing that Mika is sure about is that Sam is avoiding her.

“I mean it’s it like I _wanna_ hang out with him,” she complains. She is having lunch on the porch with Beth and Maggie, a “sisters picnic” that Maggie made a big deal of. Mika’s pretty sure it’s her way of trying to cheer Beth up about Noah dying. Still, she couldn’t stop smiling when Maggie invited her— they think of her as a _sister!_ “I just want him to stop running across the street every time he sees me. It’s like he thinks I’ve got the plague.”

It’s a sunny late-summer day, hardly a cloud in the sky. Maggie sips at her lemonade and fans herself against the heat. “I think if we’re gettin’ technical, we’ve all got the plague.”

“Whatever,” Mika huffs. “Boys are stupid.”

Beth is laying on her stomach, bare feet swinging the air. “You say that _now_ ,” she teases.

Maggie grins. “I don’t know, Bethy, I think she’s right,” she says. “Boys are stupid. I _like_ ‘em, but they’re stupid.”

“Yeah? What’d Glenn do this time?”

“Well for starters, he seems to think that—“

Suddenly there’s a crash— glass shattering, something thudding, something large and heavy falling. Mika shrieks and grabs for Maggie.

“Deanna!” someone shouts. And then people are rushing into the street, crowding around something.

It’s Rick— Rick and Dr. Anderson. They wrestle on the asphalt, blood all over them, throwing punches, skin hitting skin, skin hitting gravel. Their hands are around each other’s throats.

The townspeople are gasping, staring. Jessie and Carl both try and fail to pull the two men apart. Deanna runs over, yells at them to stop. They don’t.

“You touch them again and I’ll kill you,” Rick growls.

Touch them? Mika's stomach churns, and her scar twitches and she remembers Jessie in the infirmary. Tripping on her words and twisting her own skin. _Like she was scared_. Does thTat... Rick can't mean... Mika clings to Maggie’s shirt, and on the other side of the street she can see Sam doing the same to Carol.

“Damn it, Rick!” Deanna shouts “I said stop!”

Rick lets go, but that isn’t the same as stopping. He pulls out his gun. “Or what?” he says. “You’ll kick me out?”

He’s panting, his face covered in so much blood that it looks like he’s crying it. “You still don’t get it!” he screams. 

He screams on and on, about the “real world”, about what it takes to live in it. If Mika didn’t know better she’d think he was crazy— the kind of scary, rambling homeless person you cross the street to avoid.

But those people aren’t crazy, she thinks. They’re sick. Aren’t they?

For one quick, breathless second, Mika makes eye-contact with Carol. And then Carol is covering her mouth, eyes squeezed shut like she’s trying to lock something inside them. _She doesn't wanna see..._

“If you don’t fight, you die!” Rick screams. “I’m not gonna stand by and—“

And then Michonne clocks him in the head, and it’s over.

——

_“Where was home for you, before?”_

_“Tallahassee. Except one year when we lived in Miami, for my mom’s job.”_

_“What did she do?”_

_“She worked for the Department of Immigration.”_

_“A government woman? I like that. What about your dad?”_

_“He was a math teacher.”_

_“Really? He must have been smart too. I think my husband and I would have gotten along with your family.”_

_“I hope so. They were really great.”_

_“You said you had a sister, too?”_

_“Oh. Yeah.”_

_“Older or younger?”_

_“Older. She... she was twelve.”_

_“Were you close?”_

_“Um. Sometimes. I mean, Lizzie... Lizzie had some special needs. She could be... I dunno. I just tried to help her feel okay.”_

_“Sounds to me like she was lucky to have a sister like you.”_

_“I don’t... I mean....Thank you, ma’am.”_

——

Deanna locks Rick in one of the unfinished houses and declares that they’ll have a town meeting the next day to decide if he’s allowed to stay. It’ll be grown-ups only, Maggie tells Mika. 

It is not a good night for Number 101. Michonne has been given the job of guarding Rick’s prison cell, and Daryl’s been out for two days on a run. That leaves just Carol, Carl, Mika and the baby— and not one of them in a good mood.

Judith is crying, crying, crying, and Carol carries her around the living room in vain. “Hi there, baby girl. Oh, sweetheart, it’s okay. Aunt Carol’s got you.”

Carl is face-down on the couch. “She wants Dad,” he grumbles.

Carol sighs. “I know. I know, but she’s just going to have to make do. Mika, honey, could you heat up a bottle for her?”

Mika sits with her arms crossed. “Why should I do it?”

“Because she’s a baby,” Carol says. Her voice is calm, but getting louder. “She can’t take care of herself. She needs our help.”

Mika’s rage builds from her stomach, hot and bubbling like a teapot on boil. She rises to her feet.

“Well I’ve helped her enough!” she screams. “I saved her life! Me and Tyreese! Lizzie was gonna _kill her_ , that Terminus man was gonna kill her, and _I_ jumped in the way, _I_ saved her, I saved her _both times_! And you don’t know, cause you weren’t there, you weren’t ever there, and now that all that you do is _bake cookies_ and play _dress-up_ and act like none of it even happened!”

As soon as all the words are gone from her body it’s like she has been poked full of holes. She wants to deflate, to crumple onto the floor and just stay there. Judith is wailing even louder now, and Carol stares at Mika with her mouth ajar. Carl lifts his head.

“Mika—"

Every time Mika blinks she sees Jessie, or Sam cowering behind Carol in fear. “What did Rick mean?” she asks. “When he said not to touch them again, what was he talking about?”

Carol is silent a long moment. Then:

“Pete hits Jessie. And Ron and Sam.”

Mika can feel her face distorting. “That’s what I thought.”

Carl scrambles to his feet and takes the baby, as Carol takes a small step forward. “Honey—"

“I’m gonna sleep in the other house,” Mika declares. And she turns on her heel and slams the door on her way out.

She bangs loud on the door of Number 97, until she hears footsteps coming. The door opens and— _thank God_ — it’s Abraham. It takes him less than a second to take in her face and understand and scoop her up into his giant arms.

Mika explodes into tears, shaking and sobbing so hard she feels like she might shatter. Abraham rubs her back, smoothes her hair. He lets her cry until she’s all out of tears.

“You wanna talk about it?”

“No.”

“Wanna have a sleepover with Rosita and me?”

“Yes.”

He carries her upstairs, knocks hard on the door of his own room. “Rosita? Ya decent? Put your tits away, we got company.”

“What the hell are you talking about—"

“Kid.”

“ _Oh_.”

A minute later Rosita opens the door, dressed in a big fluffy robe and slippers.

“Hey, _chiquitita_ , rough night?” she asks.

“I hate Carol,” Mika deadpans.

“No, you do not,” Abraham says. “And you’re gonna apologize to her later for sayin’ that.” He squeezes Mika on shoulder, says to Rosita: “Kid just needs a little T-L-C.”

“Of course.” 

Abe sets her down on the bed, and Rosita gets her her very own fluffy robe, and Mika feels a little bit better. Abe finds a deck of cards, deals them out on top of the blankets.

“You ever play Bullshit?” he asks.

“No.”

“Well you’re about to learn. And I know you’ll be better than me in no time.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s terrible at this game,” Rosita whispers. And she’s right— Mika wins every hand.

——

Mika knows she shouldn’t sneak out, she _knows_ it. But she knows a lot of things, and she sneaks out anyway.

The adults are holding their meeting around a campfire, and Mika hides in the bushes nearby, listening. They talk one at a time—Michonne, Carol, Abraham— and say that Rick is a good man, a hero, a survivor. He's someone this town needs. Maggie speaks for a while, in her elegant Maggie way, about Rick being a father and about how he found all of them and brought them together.

“We’re family now,” she says. “Rick started that. And you can’t stop it, and you don’t want to.”

Some of the others, the ones who aren’t part of their group, express concern. They say they’re worried about safety, about trust, about their own families. 

Tobin is speaking when it it happens: when Rick emerges from the shadows with a walker slung over his shoulder. He throws it onto the ground, where in lands in ashes and firelight. Rick has blood on his face again, but this time when he speaks he doesn't scream. He sounds like a man, not a monster.

“I didn’t bring it in,” he says. “It got in on its own. The always will, the dead and the living, because we’re in here. They’ll hunt us and they’ll find us. They’ll try to use us and they’ll try to kill us. But we’ll kill them. We’ll survive. I’ll show you how.”

He’s keeps talking, and it seems like he’s making them all understand. The townspeople listen quietly, the campfire crackling softly behind them. Then someone else walks up— Dr. Anderson. And he’s angry.

“You’re not one of us!” he screams, over and over. He’s got something in his hand, and when it catches the light Mika realizes it’s Michonne’s sword. “You’re not one of us!”

Mika’s feels like she can’t breathe. Her head hurts, her ears start to ring. Deanna’s husband Reg steps forward. “Pete,” he says, “stop. Pete, just stop. Pete stop—“

 _it, Lizzie, stop it, Lizzie stop_ —

but he doesn’t stop. He swings the sword and then Reg is on the ground and blood is everywhere.

_Lizzie! Lizzie, don’t, Lizzie!_

Mika vaguely registers Deanna crying, people shouting, Rick lifting his gun and firing it right into Sam’s dad’s head. The gate opens, Daryl and Aaron stumbling right upon the scene of the crime as Mika lets out a wail. 

And Michonne whips her head around, and Mika is caught red-handed too.

——

“You should’ve thought of that before you snuck out.”

Mika lays on her bed with her pillow over her face, silently running through every curse word she can think of. She is _grounded_ , although the exact terms of that have not yet been defined. Carl sits in his desk chair offering little in the way of sympathy. Downstairs the grown-ups are talking, and Mika can hear voices but can’t make out who is saying what.

“I didn’t know they were gonna kill people!” Mika exclaims. 

“Yeah, but that’s not why you’re grounded.”

There’s a knock at the door, and Mika just groans and rolls onto her side. “What’s up?” Carl asks.

“S’me—” Daryl. “Can I come in?”

“Sure.”

Mika lowers her pillow in time to see Daryl step into the room. He's still dressed in the clothes he wore for his scouting trip, and he smells distinctly of campfire.

“I’m gonna go check on Judith,” Carl says. He leaves, and Daryl walks over to Mika.

“S’okay if I sit?”

Mika nods and straightens up, making room for Daryl to sit on the foot of the bed. If she was in a better mood she would probably think about how funny it looks— rough, grungy Daryl in his biker vest, perched delicately on her Minnie Mouse-printed sheets.

“Heard what happened today,” he says. “Heard you got pretty upset.”

“I’m fine,” Mika says.

Daryl’s not falling for that. “Mm-hmm.”

He’s quiet for a long moment, his eyes fixed on the wall. Then, finally:

“I ever tell you about my brother?”

Mika pulls her knees into her chest. “You had a brother?”

“Mm-hmm. Merle. Thirteen years older’n me. He was... well, he was real mean.”

“Mean how?”

“Mean a lot of ways,” Daryl says. “Didn’t like nobody. Always tryna get everything for himself. Used to call me names, boss me around. Did a lot of drugs. _Sold_ a lot of drugs. Got me to do ‘em ‘n sell ‘em too.”

They used to play that game back at the prison— the “guess what Daryl did before” game. “Drug dealer” had never made the list. Mika holds herself tighter. “Did he hit you?” she asks. 

“Nah. Didn’t hit me,” Daryl says. “But our dad... he used to hit us both.”

Mika turns just enough to look Daryl in the eye. He looks sad, and small in a way that grown-ups aren’t supposed to be. 

“You got a big scar on your belly, right?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

Daryl nods. “Most’a mine are on my back.”

And Mika understands, suddenly, why they are having this conversation. Why it is Daryl who knocked on her door, and not someone else. When she speaks her voice comes out tiny, thin and wilted.

“You’re supposed to love your family,” she says. “You’re not supposed to hurt them and you’re not supposed to hate them. But she hurt me and I hated her.”

“I know,” Daryl says. “I hated Merle too. Don’t mean I didn’t love him.”

“Why’d he do it?" she asks. "Why would anyone do something like that?”

Daryl shakes his head. “I’unno. Think some people just ain’t nice. And some of ‘em could be nice, but something gets in the way.”

 _Or something changes them_ , Mika thinks. And she remembers another voice: _"It's okay,"_ Lizzie had said. _"You can change."_

“Lizzie was sick,” she says. “I think maybe she didn’t really understand what she was doing.”

“My dad was sick too. Alcohol, it can be a kind of sick, y’know?”

“Yeah.”

Mika looks at her feet, wiggles her toes inside her polka-dot socks. Judith had been so little, back when it happened. She’d had a habit of sticking her feet in her mouth.

“Why is Carol acting so weird?” Mika asks.

“Weird how?”

“Weird like she thinks she’s in _Desperate Housewives_.”

Daryl sort of snorts at that, but then he’s quiet. “You, uh... you know ‘bout Carol’s daughter, right?”

“Sophia.”

“Mm. Well, Sophia... Her dad, he wasn’t real nice either.”

Mika’s never heard Carol mention a husband before. Now she realizes why. “Oh.”

“Carol... She just don’t want to see you get hurt,” Daryl says. Mika pulls at the corner of her shirt, on the side where the scar is.

 _But I already got hurt_ , she thinks. And maybe that’s the problem.

“Your brother,” she asks. “What happened to him?” The question that she doesn’t ask anymore, but here it is.

Daryl makes a noise that Mika thinks might be a laugh, but with Daryl it can be hard to tell. “Hell if I know,” he says. Then: “He fell in with a bad crowd, same as always. Just this time he didn’t fall back out.”

“It sounds like something hurt him,” Mika says. She isn’t talking about how he died.

Daryl nods. “I think a lot of things did.”

——

The next morning when Mika goes downstairs for breakfast, Carol is in the kitchen. She is baking, and the room is warm with flour dust and morning sun.

“What are you making?” Mika asks.

Carol is bent over a old cookbook, sorting through ingredients. “Muffins,” she says. “Oatmeal raisin. Thought it might be a nice change.”

Mika nods. She watches Carol open a box of raisins, scoop them out carefully. She takes a few steady breaths.

“Can I help?” she asks.

Carol’s head picks up, and she looks at Mika with obvious surprise. Mika smiles softly.

“Oatmeal raisin’s my favorite.”

Carol smiles back. “Mine too,” she says. She waves Mika to her side, and shows her how to measure the flour, scraping a knife over the measuring cup so it fills it just right.


	4. Camellias

Fall comes, and with it Mika’s eleventh birthday.

Carl wakes her up by pouncing on her bed. “Hey birthday girl,” he says. “Get up, there’s _cake_.”

She’s up. “Cake?”

“Yeah. Come see.”

Mika stumbles out of bed and down the stairs, still in her pajamas and tangles in her hair. In the kitchen, she finds their whole group— and a cake, a real cake, propped up on fancy cake stand with candles and everything.

It’s not exactly magazine-worthy— just a little single-tiered thing, slightly lopsided and haphazardly slathered in pink frosting. Kind of a mess, really. But still, it’s a _cake._ Mikacan’t remember the last time she saw an actual birthday cake. Mika’s jaw drops a little. She’s not even all the way off the staircase when the whole room starts to cheer.

_“Happy birthday!”_

Mika is suddenly self-conscious— she wasn’t expecting to be the center of so much attention. “You guys didn’t have to do this,” she says

“ _Nonsense_ ,” Abraham says. “Wasn’t gonna let my favorite little lady turn eleven without a damn _cake_.” He picks her up, lifts her over the railing of stairs and deposits her into one of the kitchen chairs. “Gonna make a wish?”

“You gotta light them first,” she tells him. He goes for a match, and Mika— still feeling shy— adds “Don’t sing?”

They sing. Abraham lights the candles— twelve of them, eleven plus one for good luck— and Mika stares at them. She’s got absolutely no idea what to wish for.

“Judith should do it with me,” she says suddenly. “We didn’t have a cake on her birthday. She’s never done it before.”

Carol gives her a bemused smile. “Are you sure?” she asks. “It’s your birthday, it’s okay if you don’t want to share.”

“I’m sure,” Mika declares. “We’re family. Family does things together.”

So Rick brings her the baby, settles her into Mika’s arms. Mika takes Judith’s hand and helps her point to the cake.

“See that? We’re gonna blow out the candles. Count of three, okay? One, two—“

Mika blows, and Judith imitates her— puffing little baby breaths until all the flames are gone. In the background she can hear Carl’s Polaroid camera click. The wish never comes to her, but that’s okay. She’s here, in a safe place with her family. What more could she wish for?

——

They don’t have a party, exactly, but that afternoon all the kids in town come over to try the cake. Hopped on sugar and special occasion, they run around in the streets, jumping rope and playing games and laughing.

Mika is sitting on the porch steps when Abe sits own next to her. “Why aren’t you out there playing with your friends?”

Mika shrugs. “I dunno, just felt like sitting.”

Abe gives her a little nudge on the shoulder. “That was really nice of you this morning,” he says, “sharing your moment with Judith.” Mika’s not sure if she wants to blush or roll her eyes.

“It was whatever.”

“It was very sweet,” Abraham insists. Mika goes with the eye roll— maybe she’s developing a snarky pre-teen attitude. Either way, Abe is undeterred.

“Something came in the mail for you, by the way,” he says.

They don’t get mail here. “What do you mean the _mail_?”

“Well, maybe not quite the mail,” Abe says. There is a sly smile growing underneath his mustache. “More like a bird dropped it off.”

“A bird?”

“Yeah. An owl.”

Mika’s starting to think she might know where this is going. She raises her eyebrows at him. “Really?" she sasses. "And what was it?” Yup, definitely a pre-teen now.

“Got it for you right here.”

He pulls out a brown paper envelope, with “Miss M. Samuels” scrawled in messy cursive on the front. He’s even sealed it with a little clump of red wax. Mika opens it, careful not to rip anything, grinning ear-to-ear the whole time.

“Dear Miss Samuels,” Mika reads. “We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted at Hogwarts School Of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Please find enclosed a list of all the necessary books and equipment. Term begins the first of the month. We await your owl as soon as possible. We know you will make a fine addition to Hufflepuff House.

Yours sincerely,

Albus Dumbledore.”

“Abe!” Mika exclaims. “You’re not supposed to put the house in the letter! And McGonagall writes them, not Dumbledore!”

Abe pretends to be annoyed. “Well, excuse me, Little Lady. Not my fault they couldn’t let us borrow the Sorting Hat,” he says. “And you’re just so important that Dumbledore had to write the letter himself.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“Course it’s ridiculous. What were you expectin’ from a school where instead of throwing around a pigskin, they play goddamn flying lacrosse?”

Mika laughs, and throws her arms around him. “I love it,” she says. “Thank you so much.”

Abraham hugs her back— his hugs are so strong that sometimes they take the breath out of her. “You’re very welcome, Little Lady.”

One of the other kids runs towards the porch. “Mika! We’re gonna play Red Rover, want to join?”

“Oh, for sure!” Mika exclaims. “Be there in a minute!”

She stands up, dusting the dirt off her jeans. “Sorry, Abe, gotta go. I kick ass at Red Rover.”

“Kick _ass_?”

Mika shrugs. “What? I’m eleven now. I think that’s old enough to cuss.” 

Abraham beams— like, he just could not be any prouder. “You know what? I think you’re _damn_ right.”

“And to drink coffee?” Mika tries. He narrows his eyes. 

“We’ll see.”

——

Not long after, Rick and Morgan discover the quarry full of walkers.

There’s something else, too— the man with the “W” on his forhead, the one Daryl and Aaron saw on one of their runs. But there’s been no sign of him since, so the quarry comes first. The adults hold a meeting in one of the houses. 

Some part of Mika wants to sneak into the room, but she learned her lesson about that after watching Reg and Dr. Anderson die. Instead she takes a book to the little playground behind the schoolhouse. It’s just a swingset and some play equipment, the kind of stuff a family with preschoolers might have in their backyard. Nothing much, but it’s a great place to get fresh air.

There is something deeply comforting about reading on a swing, Mika thinks. Feeling the sun on her face, drifting back-and-forth as she scrapes her shoes across the ground. Mika is reading _Little Women_ , which Carol recommend. Now that she isn’t mad at her anymore, Mika has discovered that Carol has excellent taste in books.

She’s been there while when she hears something rustling in the trees. For a split second she almost panics— _it’s a walker it’s a wolf it’s_ — But then she looks up, and it’s Sam.

Things have been weird between them since his dad died. Like, Mika tries to be friendly and polite at school, but Sam brushes her off and then runs away as soon as class ends. He's always wide-eyed and twitchy, like he's afraid of her.

He stands stuck still, a few meters away, staring at her. It’s creepy, honestly. Mika raises a hand and waves. “Hi.”

He waves back but doesn’t say anything, keeps standing there. Mika tries to just ignore him and read but it’s hard to read when someone is standing there staring at you like some kind of scary movie ghost.

Finally she’s had it. Slams her book shut and marches up to him.

“What are you doing?” she demands.

He shrugs, mumbles. “Just came here to play.”

“Then go play. I’m just reading, I’m not gonna bother you.” 

“Yeah, but...”

“But what? You’re being an _asshole_ , you know that? It’s not _my_ fault your dad is dead.”

As soon as she says it Mika wants to take it back. Sam’s eyes go glassy, wet like he might cry. Mika digs her nails into the palm of her hand.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m really sorry. I shouldn’t have said that.”

Sam is sobbing now, big fat tear drops that roll down his face and then splatter on the ground. “It’s okay,” he mutters.

“It’s really not, I’m—“

But before she can finish her sentence he’s gone.

——

Carol was right: Mika does love baking.

It’s a few days later, the day that they’ve chosen to empty the quarry. It’s a big job, from the sounds of it, and a big chunk of Mika's group is there: Rick, Abe, Daryl, Sasha, Glenn, Morgan. Mika has decided to bake cookies, so they’ll have something nice to eat when they get home. 

Baking is a big chemistry project, just like Carol said. Take sugar cookies, for example. If you only use white sugar, they’re thin and light. But add something darker— brown sugar, or molasses maybe— and they get thicker and richer, just like the sugar itself. Baking powder rises more than baking soda, so those cookies are fluffy and soft like cake. And they don’t always have enough butter, so Carol showed her how to substitute with applesauce. Eugene even explained why that works on a molecular level: applesauce is full of _pectin_ , which is like gelatin but made from fruit, and it holds everything together the same way the butter does.

She is mixing the batter when Carol comes in through the front door. “Hey, sweetheart,” she says. “What are you making?”

“Just sugar cookies,” Mika answers. “So everyone can have something sweet when they get home.”

“That’s so nice of you,” Carol says. “Was Sam helping?”

Sam? “Why would Sam be helping?”

“I just saw him out on the porch, thought he might have been here for you?”

Mika’s nose wrinkles up. Seriously? Now he’s waiting around her house like a stalker? “I don’t know why he was here,” Mika says. “We’re not friends or anything.” She finishes stirring and adds: “Hey do we have any candies? I want to make these colorful.”

Carol doesn’t push her on the Sam thing. “I think we’re out of candy,” she says. “But we do have food coloring. And we can make them into shapes.”

“Oh yeah!” Mika exclaims. “That’ll work."

Carol digs the food coloring out of a cabinet, and the divide the dough into three different primary-colored batches. They mold it all into shapes: blue stars, red hearts, yellow crescent moons. Mika makes letters, one for each of her friends who went out to the quarry. R for Rick, A for Abraham, _G M D S_...

Soon the cookies are in the oven, and Mika is feeling satisfied. It’ll be a good evening, she thinks. The quarry team will get rid of all the walkers, keep Alexandria safe and be back in time for a big family dinner. Abe will tell her all about how about how the mission went, and everyone will talk and laugh and smile and eat cookies. It’ll be great.

Except that’s not what happens.

——

Carl slumps through the door as they’re cleaning up. “Hi, honey, how’s it going?” Carol asks. He just grunts in response.

“That bad?”

He kicks off his shoes and huffs into his hair— lately his bangs are always in his face, like he’s in one of those “emo” bands. “I’m upstairs if you need me,” he mumbles. It is not at all an answer.

Once Mika hears him shut the door to their room, she looks at Carol with her eyebrows raised. “Well he’s a _grump_.”

Carol gives her a wry smile. “Oh, he’s just a teenager,” she says. “Trust me, you’ll be the same way in a few years.”

“Nuh-uh,” Mika protests. “I won’t every be that much a of brat.”

Carol ruffles her hair. “Sweetie, you’re already a brat.” And Mika sticks out her tongue— which is probably a case in Carol’s point.

Mika wets a sponge and wipes down the counter, humming a little as she works— _like Snow White_. Carol wanders over to the front window, draws a hole in the curtain—

and gasps.

“Mika, go upstairs,” she says. All of her playful tone is gone, sucked out by cold and steel-hardness. Mika looks up.

“Why?”

“Because I said so,” Carol says. She grabs Mika by the wrist and pulls her toward the stairs, just as Carl comes clambering down them. He’s holding his biggest gun. Outside, Mika can hear someone scream.

“I saw from upstairs,” Carl says. “They’re coming in from all over.”

Carol sort of shoves Mika at him. “You have to stay here,” she says. “Keep Mika and Judith safe.”

“Safe from what?” Mika asks. But Carol runs out the door before without giving an answer.

Carl ushers her up the stairs. “I’ll explain, c’mon.”

He leads her into the master bedroom, where Judith is asleep her crib. “A bunch of people just broke through the walls,” he says. “Set them on fire. Killed the look out, killed Mrs. Neudermeyer.”

“What?” Mika says. “How— who are they?”

“I don’t know.” He peers out the window, gun drawn, moving on the balls of his feet. “You stay here. Keep an eye on her. I’ll guard the door downstairs.”

He’s leaving her alone with the baby? When there are murderers outside? “I— I can’t—“ Mika stutters. “What if I mess up? Get her hurt?”

“You won’t.” Carl rests a hand on her shoulder, looks her right in the eye. When he speaks its firm, decisive. “You got this. Saved her twice already, right?”

He sounds a lot like his dad. Mika swallows the lump of fear inside her throat. Nods.

“Okay.”

Carl gives her shoulder a sturdy squeeze before he bolts out the room. Mika takes in a deep breathe, tiptoes to window, wills herself to look out at what’s going on.

The streets are already spotted red. Blurry bodies run and scream, Alexandrians and invaders alike. From up here it’s a little hard to tell the difference— or it would be, if the invaders weren’t brandishing axes and knives, stabbing people into corpses and then playing in the blood. Mika can feel her stomach churning. She tears her eyes away, peeks into Judith’s crib.

“Hi there, Jude,” she says. It comes out a breathless whisper. “It’s me. There’s some scary stuff going on right now but you’re gonna be okay. I’m gonna keep you safe.”

Mika’s whole body is shaking, but she tries hard not to let it show. She tries to sound confident and sure and strong, just like Carl just did. Just like any of the rest of them would.

Something crashes outside, and it startles Judith awake. She squeaks and stirs, her face turning pink as the cry builds. _Oh shit_ , Mika thinks.

She just about dives into the crib, picks Judith up and cradles her before the scream can come. “It’s okay,” she says. “It’s okay, it’s okay, just—“

_Just look at the flowers, just breathe with me, Lizzie, count one two three..._

Mika holds Judith close to her chest, bounces her, shuts her eyes tight and tries not to remember... Well, anything. Not the lifetime spent trying to keep Lizzie calm, not pointing a gun at a walker while Lizzie held Judith, not...

_Judith had been screaming screaming screaming and then she just stopped._

Mika feels like she might throw up, like she can’t breathe. But Judith is whining in her arms, this soft little beautiful perfect baby and when Mika looks at her she feels a fire flare somewhere inside.

She has to be brave. She’s going to be brave. For Judith.

“I got you,” she says, and this time it’s a promise.

Mika stays there for a while, holding Judith and whispering quiet reassurances, until all of a sudden she hears noise just outside the house. Scuffling, shouting. _Carl_. Mika doesn’t hesitate. She sets Judith back down in the crib, grabs one of Rick’s guns off the dresser and dashes out of the room.

Downstairs Enid is standing in the open doorway, while Carl holds his rifle over one of the invaders and Ron stares from a few feet away. The invader is crying on the ground, begging. “Please don’t kill me, man, please. Help me, please. My leg.” He’s got a “W” carved into his forehead.

Carl hesitates, and then the man lunges for him— grabs the barrel of the rifle and wrestles him to the ground. Carl’s tough but he’s still pretty small and the man’s bigger. Mika can see that he’s struggling. And so she screams:

“Don’t you dare hurt him!”

And she fires Rick’s gun.

The blowback is more than she expected, and she stumbles against the porch rail. Her shot misses, lands somewhere in the grass maybe two feet in front of her, but the distraction is enough. Carl regains the upper hand, shoots the “W” man in the head.

Mika is wide-eyed, gasping. All of them are gasping. The town’s in commotion around them but for just one moment the four kids stand still, the air thick and dry with _what-the-hell-just-happened_.

Carl regains his composure first. He looks to Ron. “Come inside, I’ll protect you.” But Ron shakes his head no. Enid yells for Carl to hurry, and he does, pulling Mika back into the house with him. 

“That my dad’s gun?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

He locks the door, exhales, nods.

“That was a good call.”

——

Mika’s first walker was a man who had drowned.

Mommy worked for the government, so when everything started she was able to get them a place in one of the National Guard safe-zones. For about two weeks, the Samuels family lived in hotel in downtown Tallahassee, not too far from the Capitol building. About half of the people there were with the government in some way.

During the day time they were allowed to wander around, as long as they didn’t leave the hotel property. Daddy taught high school, so he was one of the people put in charge of holding a daycare in a spare conference room. He was good at keeping the kids busy, with schoolwork and arts-and-crafts and games. Mommy, meanwhile, was in and out of meetings all day.

At night the rules were stricter, and that’s when things would get bad. Quarantined in their two-bedroom suite on the eighteenth floor, Lizzie was a claustrophobic nightmare. No matter how many times Mommy and Daddy said “people are sick”, she did not understand why they had to be there. She hated being alone, hated keeping the blinds down, hated living in a strange place where things weren’t the same. Her screaming fits were two, three times a day. Mika started to lock herself in the bathroom and turn her CD player up way too loud.

Then on Day Twelve, Lizzie woke her up at five a.m. “Come on,” she said. “I wanna go to the pool.”

Mika sat up in bed, rubbing the fog from her eyes. “The pool? Now?” she said. “But the curfew—”

“Fuck the curfew.”

Fuck? “You’re not supposed to say—”

“We’re also not supposed to be living in a hotel and not going to school. So why should we listen to the stupid curfew?”

Mika blinked. She wasn’t too sure about this. But Lizzie was probably gonna do it with her or without her, and Mika figured that “with her” was better. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”

So they changed into their bathing suits and flip-flops, and took two towels from the bathroom. They snuck out of the suite as quietly as the could, and rode the elevator to the tenth floor where the pool was.

Outside on the deck it was quiet. The sun was just starting to come up, the air windless and the sky a dusty shade of lavender. The pool seemed to glow, like something out of a fairy tale.

There was no one around, so Lizzie dumped their towels onto a lounge chair and took off towards the water. She jumped right in, shrieking with joy and splashing everywhere.

“C’mon! Mika, c’mon!” she exclaimed.

Mika was feeling more cautious. She tiptoed towards the shallow end, thinking maybe she would just dip her feet in and wait while Lizzie played. She crouched down over the edge of the pool…

And that’s when she saw it.

A dark, misshapen lump, floating over by the stairs. At first Mika thought maybe it was a cushion from one of the chairs. But then she saw a string of hair, and a foot. _It’s a person_ , she realized.

Her words came out in fragments. “Lizzie, there… There’s somebody here.”

“What?” Lizzie called out.

“A person,” Mika said. “There’s a person.”

She crept up towards the body, with Lizzie swimming not far behind her. “They don’t look…” Mika stuttered. “I don’t think he’s okay, Lizzie, maybe we should get…”

And then it happened. The man let out a horrible noise, and his head jolted up, his limbs thrashing and foam dripping from his mouth. His eyes were bloodshot an his face was bloated and purple and thick, like he’d been in the water for hours. _Or days_. He screamed, but it wasn’t a normal scream. It was inhuman and ugly, a dying fish, a sea monster. Mika thought of the Pirates of the Carribean movie, of Captain Barbosa and his crew wearing their skeletons inside out. _You best start believing in ghost stories, Ms. Turner..._

The man lunged at her, and Mika screamed. She was paralyzed with fear, couldn’t see straight, couldn’t move. There was a monster coming right at her and she was dead, she was going to die—

And then Lizzie leapt out of the water and grabbed her, whatever big sisterly instinct she may have possessed taking over in the moment when in counted. She took Mika by the hand and they ran, off the pool deck and inside and straight down the hallway, a trail of wet footsteps tracing behind them all the way back to their room.

——

They lose sixteen people that day.

Seventeen if you count Enid, who apparently just... walked off. Mika stays with Judith while the grown-ups clean the streets, and she eats all of the leftover cookie dough. She is pretty sure today could not possibly get any worse.

But of course it does. Because when Rick comes back, he is alone and being followed by a massive herd of walkers. 

Rick is very Rick about it. He gives a big speech to the whole town, about how everything is going to be okay. “The others, they’re gonna be back,” he says. “Daryl, Abraham, Sasha. They have vehicles.” And Mika thinks about Daryl on his bike, Abraham driving the truck and then she thinks about them crashing.

The walkers are from the quarry, maybe half of what was there. They bang at the gates, snarling and growling. Strengthening the wall is suddenly the most important priority.

Mika helps Carol make dinner— casserole, with as many extra servings as they can manage for everyone working the wall. Mika knows that Abe would be one of them, if he were here, and she can’t stop thinking about it. She is chopping an onion and it stings her eyes, and pretty soon she’s just bawling.

“Oh, Mika,” Carol soothes. She rubs a hand up and down Mika’s back. “It’s gonna be okay. It is.”

Mika wants to believe but she doesn’t. “What if its not?” she says. “What if they don’t come back, and the walkers get them and we never see them again? What if it isn’t okay?”

Carol takes the knife from Mika’s hand, slices the onion into thin disks. “Then it’s not,” she says. “And we grieve and we move on.”

“How can you say that?”

“I know it’s hard to hear,” Carol says. “But it’s what we have to do. People die in this world, and we have to find ways to keep going. You’ve done it before. I know you can do it again."

And she has done it before, hasn’t she? When her mom died. Her dad. Tyreese. Back at Ty’s funeral, Mika was sure she would never ever smile again. But she did. She smiles all the time. What kind of bullshit injustice is that? That she gets to be happy and safe and eat cookies and birthday cake and meanwhile her whole family’s _dead_.

“I don’t want to forget,” Mika says, and just saying that makes her whole body weak. She buckles against the countertop, until Carol pulls her into a hug.

“You won’t,” she says. “You’ll never forget.”

And that's a mixed blessing, isn't it?

——

That night Mika lies in bed not sleeping, and for once she has company.

“Mika?” Carl whispers. “You up?”

“Yeah,” she answers.

“You doing okay?”

Mika half-sits up, clicks on her bedside lamp. It casts a gold glow on the dark room.

“I’m okay,” she says. “How ‘bout you?”

Carl shrugs, a clumsy movement underneath his blankets. “Yeah.”

It isn’t very convincing. “Are you sad about Enid leaving?” Mika asks. Carl just shrugs again.

“Do you like her?”

He shifts in his bed, so that’s he’s facing Mika straight-on. “Of course I do, she’s my friend.”

Mika fights the urge to roll her eyes. “No, I mean do you _like her_ like her.”

Even in the dim light she can see Carl flush. “Yeah,” he admits. “Yeah, but she’s with Ron, so...”

“Well Ron is stupid,” Mika declares. “And she must be stupid too, if she’d rather be with him than you.”

Carl sort-of laughs. “Thanks, I think.”

“I mean it. You’re definitely boyfriend material.” Whatever boyfriend material means.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Sometimes I think I might be turning into Shane.”

“Who’s Shane?”

Carl face goes kind of blank. “No one. Just, someone we used to know.”

“Was he like a bad guy?” Mika asks. And as soon as she says, she knows that there isn't an answer.

Carl blows his hair out of his eyes. "You saved my ass today, you know,” he tells her. Mika shakes her head.

“You would’ve won. You’re good at fighting.”

“You still helped.”

Maybe. Mika stares up at the shadows on the ceiling and remembers the cottage. She remembers the white walls and green grass, the smell of pecans and wood and fire. She remembers black and red and darkness and then waking up in faded floral sheets. Sometimes it still feels like yesterday.

_When the bad people were at the prison, they were right in front of us and I held up my gun, but I couldn't pull the trigger. Killing people is wrong._

_What about the people who try to kill you?_

“That was the first time that I ever shot at a person,” she says.

_I feel sorry for them._

Sometimes it feels like a lifetime ago.

——

When Rick hears what happened in the front yard, he decides the best thing to do is teach Ron and Mika how to shoot. So the next afternoon he takes them down to an open-air space by the wall.

“Handguns’ll be a little better for your first go,” he tells Ron. “Magazine release, slide release. Thumb safety.”

He walks them through the parts of the gun, shows Ron how to hold it. “Someone’s in front of you, they have a gun—“

Carl cuts in. “You’re gonna be scared. You will be.”

“Your body’s gonna tense,” Rick continues. “You won’t have time to think. You’re just gonna want to pull the trigger when you get in front of you. But you’ll miss. And you’ll be dead."

He looks at Mika. “That’s what happened to you,” he tells her. “Can’t just go firing on impulse. You got lucky yesterday, but that’s how people get hurt. You have to know exactly what you’re doing.”

Mika nods. “Yes, sir.”

Rick holds his gun out to demonstrate a well-place shot. “You’ve got to hold it up to your eye.”

“You’ve got to be strong enough to wait for your moment,” Carl adds.

Ron makes a face like he’s eaten something sour. “Can I—“ 

Rick gives him the gun, and he holds it up, tries it out. Rick’s got a gun for Mika, too. It’s not the same one she shot yesterday, and she’s pretty sure she’s happy about that.

Carl helps her position it. “That’s good,” he says. “You’ve got it.”

She shuts one eye but somehow it makes her see double. “How do I know I’m aiming right?” she asks.

“Just takes practice.”

Ron wants to try shooting at the walkers outside the wall, or targets, or something, and Mika is relieved when Rick says no. She’s not ready to do it again, not if she doesn’t have to.

_Sooner or later you’re gonna have to do it,_ Carol had said. And Mika had shot at a walker that day, and she didn’t miss then.

——

On their way back to the houses Ron asks Carl: “Wanna come play a video game or something?”

Carl shrugs. “Sure.”

“Can I come?” Mika asks.

Ron doesn’t look at her. “We’re probably gonna play a fighting game. It’s violent. you wouldn’t like it.

They were just out shooting guns and he’s lecturing her about violence? “I don’t mind,” she says. He huffs a breath.

“Can’t you go play with Sam or something?”

_Go play_ _with Sam_? Like she’s in kindergarten? “Sam’s a baby.”

“You’re the same age as him.”

“Oh, let her come,” Carl interjects. “Mika’s cool.”

Ron looks back and forth between them. His hand strays to his belt, where his new gun’s already holstered. “You know what, never mind,” he says. “I forgot I have homework to do.” And he turns on his heel and walks off, leaving Carl and Mika in the middle of the street.

Mika shuffles her shoes on the pavement. “Sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to mess up your plans.”

Carl rolls his eyes. “Don’t worry about it, I didn’t care that much,” he says. “I beat that game years ago anyway. Hey, I think I saw a beehive down by the fence, let’s go check it out.”

He’s right, it is a beehive, high up on a tree just outside the walls. They examine the branches from a few yards away, trying to figure out if there’s a way to get it down. Maybe someone in town knows how to take care of bees, and then they could have honey anytime they want.

This is what the are doing, when the balloons rise into the air. Fluttering spots of green, bright against the powder grey sky. In the distance Mika can hear Maggie shouting— “Glenn! That’s Glenn, that’s Glenn!”. Mika starts to smile, to lighten at this little bit of good news, to breathe. And then she has a sudden, fleeting memory from one of Daryl’s horror stories _—_

_“—whenever the clown appeared he’d be holdin’ all these red balloons. After Georgie died, Bill, sometimes he’d just be walkin’ round town and he’d think that he saw ‘em, red balloons always dancin’ in the corner of his eye. Started to feel like a warning, like—”_

—and then the watchtower groans. It leans, falls, slow at first and then faster. And it crashes, taking Alexandria’s walls down with it.

——

It all happens fast. The herd of walkers bursts into the town, a mass of limbs and debris. There are gunshots, shouting, shoving, doors slamming. Maggie clambers up the lookout post and everywhere the ground seems to shake.

Carl grabs Mika’s wrist and they run. The first person they find is Ron, wide-eyed and sweating. “Carl—“ he starts to say, but Carl just waves him along. 

“This way!”

The join up with Michonne, and then Gabriel, Rick and Deanna. The walkers surround them, and they don’t which way to turn until there’s another barrage of gunfire— Jessie.

“C’mon, I have Judith!” she exclaims, beckoning them into her house. They trail inside, Michonne locking the door behind her.

Now that they’re standing still, Mika can see the blood all over Deanna’s stomach. Michonne sees it too— “Oh, god, what happened to her?”

“She fell on a saw blade,” Rick explains. “We need to get her somewhere—"

“Put her on the couch, upstairs,” Jessie directs him. It takes all three of them to get Deanna up to Jessie’s spare bedroom. Carl and Mika follow, and Carl lifts a crying Judith from her crib.

Mika can hear music from the room across the hall. Jessie is frantic, pushes the door open. “Sam!” she exclaims. “Sam I need you to turn off the music and shut the blinds.”

“Because of the monsters?” Mika hears Sam ask.

Jessie doesn’t answer him, just cups his cheek and says: “You stay there and you stay quiet. It’s gonna be okay, okay?”

“Mom—“

“Honey, just, just try. Just pretend, okay? Just pretend that you’re somebody who’s not scared. Just try. Okay? I love you.” 

Jessie rushes back to Deanna’s bedside. Mika is about to trail Carl down the stairs when Rick suddenly looks at her. 

“Mika, go wait with Sam,” he says.

With Sam? While he’s this scared? “But—“

“Mika, _please_. You’ll be safer there.”

He seems scared himself. Mika nods, slips into Sam’s room and shuts the door.

Sam’s bedroom is a mess— toys scattered everywhere, dirty clothes and sheets on the floor. There’s a plate underneath the window, with a ant-covered lump that Mika thinks might be a half eaten cookie. Oatmeal raisin, like she and Carol make. Sam’s CD player is on, croaking some old-sounding song about flowers.

_...tip-toe from the garden, by the garden of a willow tree..._

Mika hasn’t even spoken to Sam since the playground, and the guilt of that moment is in her throat like vomit, threatening a return. 

“Sam, I’m really really sorry about the other day,” she says. “I should never have said that about your dad.”

_...and tip-toe through the tulips with me..._

Sam’s face is all wobbly. “It’s okay.”

“Are you scared?” Mika asks. He shrugs, and she think that it’s a yes.

“It’s okay if you’re scared. I’m scared too,” she admits. “But we can be brave. We have to be brave.”

“But the monsters...” Sam says. “The monsters’ll...”

He starts to cry. Sinks to the floor and curls up on himself and sobs. And for a moment Mika just stands there, dumbfounded and trembling. And then she does the only thing she knows how to do. She gets down on her knees, scoots up next to him, lays an arm around his shoulders and...

_...knee deep in the flowers we’ll stray, we’ll keep the showers away..._

“Look at flowers, Sam,” Mika says. “The ones on the tree outside, see them? Those pink ones, they’re called camellias. They bloom in the fall. Just, just look at the flowers and breathe with me, okay? Count one, two, three...”

And slowly but surely, Sam stops crying. He looks up, out the window at the camellia tree. He’s still shaking, they both are, but he doesn’t seem ready to crumble to bits anymore. He sniffs, rubs his eyes. 

_...and if I miss you in the garden, in the moonlight, will you pardon me..._

“Thanks,” he says.

Mika looks at the wall, at the floor, at the ants gathered and writhing in the corner. Looks at anything expect for those goddamn camellias.

“Yeah,” she whispers. “Of course.”

_...and tiptoe through the tulips with me..._

_——_

It all happens slow. There are noises downstairs— crashing, banging, shouting. Mika counts the seconds in her head, and they all seem to last too long.

Then they hear people talking directly outside the room, and Sam finally opens the door. He freezes in place.

“Mom?”

In the room across the hall, Jessie and everyone are standing with sheets on their shoulders, like Halloween ghosts. There’s a walker cut open on the floor, and they’re smearing its guts all over themselves.

Jessie takes a deep breath before she speaks to Sam. “You need to listen to me, okay?” she says. “We aren’t safe here anymore. Okay, we need to do this so that we can be safe out there. We need to look like the monsters.”

It’s scent camouflage, Mika realizes. Making themselves smell like walkers so the walkers won’t attack. It’s what squirrels do, drenching themselves in rattlesnake to stay alive. It’s what Carol did, that day at Terminus.

Sam is paralyzed with fear. “No,” he whimpers, “please no.”

“Yes, honey, we have to go.”

Mika walks to the doorway. “You can do it, Sam,” she says. “It’s not so bad, it’s just a costume.”

“That’s right, it’s just pretend,” Jessie tells him. “Just pretend you’re brave. Make it all pretend, okay, none of this is real and you’re somebody who isn’t afraid.”

_But she’s pretending too_ , Mika thinks. She’s terrified and pretending she isn’t. Just like Eugene pretended he was a scientist, like Daryl pretends he doesn’t miss his brother. Like Carol pretends she doesn't know what it feels like to get hit. Grown-ups, they play pretend all the time, don’t they?

Mika takes Sam’s hand into hers. “It’ll be okay,” she says, and she isn’t sure if she means it.

——

They find sheets for Sam and Mika, and soon they’re all covered in walker guts. It smells bad, really bad, like dog food and garbage. Even through the sheets it feels like it could seep into her skin.

Carl hides Judith in his shirt, and they grab hands as Rick takes down their barricade. The living room is so full of walkers that Mika can taste it. She holds her breath as they walk, slowly, step-by-step.

They push through the living room, out of the house and onto the porch. Outside the sun’s starting to set, casting the whole town in too-hot red. They walk through the streets, passing walker after walker, tripping over dead bodies. Until Rick pulls them all to a stop.

“All right, new plan,” he says. “Flares from a few guns aren’t enough. Too many walkers, too spread out. We’re not going to the armory, we need our vehicles back at the quarry.”

He wants to try and drive the walkers out of town. Jessie agrees to it, but she seems hesitant.

“But Judith,” she says. “To the quarry and back...”

Rick looks away, until Father Gabriel chimes in. “I’ll take her. Keep her safe in my church until you all lead the walkers away.”

Rick says yes, and Carl hands Judith off to Father Gabriel. Jessie inhales, suddenly, almost like a gasp and—

“Take Sam,” she says.

Sam is wide-eyed. “No,” he says.

“Yes, Sam, it’ll be safer.”

“No,” he says again. “I’m not leaving you.”

“Sam—“

“Mom, I’m not,” Sam says, and there is a note of something strong in his voice— of defiance, of bravery. Maybe it’s even real. “I can keep going. Please.”

There’s a long pause, then Jessie gives in. “Okay.”

Michonne looks at Mika. “Mika, do you want—“

If Sam is gonna be brave, he needs Mika to be brave too. She knows that. “I’ll stay with you,” she says. “I’m okay.”

Father Gabriel leaves, lurches off with the sun on his back, disappears into the horde. They form their chain again, Mika towards the end between Ron and Michonne. And they walk. They walk and they walk and they walk, until the night falls, until it’s all the way dark.

Mika tries to stare straight ahead, to just look at Ron’s back and not have to see any of the walkers. But she sees— she sees their organs spilling out of their chest, their bones pulling at their skin, their hair and teeth and eyes gone charcoal and grey. She sees the leaves on the trees, the autumn blossoms and the branches that twist and turn into the sky.

And she sees _him_ — the child walker, the dead little boy, the one who makes Sam stop in his tracks.

Jessie and Rick urge him on, their words blurring together. _C’mon, c’mon, sweetheart, Sam, you can do it_ , _c’mon_. Ron leans down, looks at him close. _Sam, you can do this Sam, honey you can do it, Sam just look at Mom._

Mika tries too— “You’re brave, Sam, I know you are. You’re can be brave. For your family.”

But nothing works. Sam starts to cry, and then the walkers are on him and he’s screaming.

——

It all happens fast. Sam has blood gushing from the bite in his head, from the bite in his neck, from the bites that are everywhere. He’s gone in seconds, torn to shreds on the ground.

Jessie screams like she’s been knifed in the chest. Rick says her name over and over, a beating pulse of _Jessie Jessie Jessie,_ but she barely seems to hear. Mika holds Michonne’s hand so tight that she can feel the blood pooling in her palms.

Carl’s tugs on Jessie’s arm. “Come on, we have to go.“

But Jessie doesn’t go. Jessie doesn’t move, can’t move, can only wail. Until the walkers are on her too. Her body drops, breaks, reddens. And Carl gasps— “Dad”— because his hand is caught. Because dead or alive Jessie can’t let go.

Rick takes his axe and he swings, once twice three times. He cuts Jessie’s arm off at the wrist, freeing Carl—

and Ron raises his gun.

Mika has to clamp both of her hands over her mouth to keep from screaming. Ron’s gun is aimed right at Rick’s head, and when he speaks Mika thinks he sounds a lot like his father.

“You,” he says, “you.”

And then Michonne runs him through with her sword—

and the gun goes off anyway—

and Carl’s face bursts open.

——

They run. Rick takes Carl in his arms, and Michonne swings her sword at every walker in sight and they run. Mika forces herself to not think, to not feel, to not breathe, to just _run_. When they finally reach the infirmary, she’s seeing blue from lack of air.

Dr. Denise lets them in. “This is a gunshot?"

“Hand gun,” Michonne say. “Close range.”

Rick drops Carl on the table and steps back. He looks like all the life’s been burnt out of him, like he could crumble into ashes.

“Please save him,” he says. “Please.”

There’s a few other people in the house— Spencer, Aaron, Beth, Heath. Dr. Denise tells them all what to do.

“I need light,” she says. “Michonne, towel, hold it here. Okay, we need to keep pressure on the wound. I’ll go in and sew up any lacerations. Spencer, I need that pan—“

Mika feels like a stupid kid, useless and hiding in the corner, her head spinning as she watches everything. She remembers her dad dying, lying in his bunk and just _dying_ and somehow she had looked away. How had she done that? Because Lizzie had been upset, because she’d _had_ to. It seems impossible now, to think that she could have shut her eyes and blacked out that moment. 

Rick is sort of hovering by window, floating back and forth, one hand on the curtain. Like he’s considering something. Then he makes the decision: he draws his machete, opens the door and walks outside.

Michonne yells for him. “Rick, what are you doing, Rick?” But the door’s already shut again. Still, they all know what he’s doing— he’s fighting the walkers.

Michonne is frantic. “Rick’s out there, he needs my help.”

“Hold on,” Dr. Denise says.

“But he’s out there!”

“This is his son, give me a second.”

That’s when Beth steps in. She takes the towel from Michonne’s hand. “Go,” she says. “I’m a veterinarian’s daughter. I got this.”

Heath and Aaron are on their feet, ready to fight too. Even Spencer. Michonne kisses Carl on the forehead then bolts out the door, the men following.

Beth beckons to Mika. “Hey,” she says. “Think you can help?” Mika feels like she’s going to collapse, but she doesn’t. She nods, takes a few steps towards the table. Lets Beth show her how to hold the towel still and steady.

Mika can’t say she understands all of it— the tools and the liquids, the medical words that Dr. Denise and Beth throw back-and-forth rapid-fire. But she does everything that they tell her, and she does it quick and she does it clean and well. Her hands aren’t even shaking. For the first time all night Mika doesn’t feel scared. She feels strong.

Dr. Denise sews up the holes in Carl’s face. There are medicines, disinfectants, bandages. Blood. So so so much blood. But he lives.

But they save him.

——

Outside they’re saving people too. Everyone in town has come together to fight the walkers. They’re a team, Alexandria. And tonight they win.

When Carl is okay enough— _stable_ , that’s the medical word— Beth and Mika venture out of the house to see what’s going on. The walkers are all dead, piled up everywhere on the streets. There’s a fire burning somewhere, black smoke clogging the air, and some kind of truck is wedged against the fence and—

“Abe!”

Mika runs as fast as she can, throws herself at Abraham’s chest. He is wearing a fancy white shirt that is covered in blood, and he smiles when he sees her. 

“Well hey there, Little Lady,” he says. “What are you doing up, ain’t it past your bedtime?”

Mika’s not sure whether to laugh or cry and ultimately she does both, all the stress of these last two days pouring out of her in big gushy waves and leaving snot all over his ridiculous, completely un-Abraham-like shirt.

“What the hell are you wearing?” she asks, and it makes him bellow with laughter.

“Love you too, kid,” he says, as she sobs into his shoulder. “Love you too.”

——

Twenty-four people dead.

They dig twenty-four graves, but they don’t bury twenty-four bodies. The walkers didn’t leave enough of Sam or Ron or Jessie behind.

Father Gabriel holds a funeral service, for anyone who wants to go. Mika attends with Carol. They sit in the pews as their neighbors give eulogies, share all their very best memories of Stacy and Holly and Annie and Pascal, Mrs. Miller and Mrs. Neudermeyer, Nicholas and Deanna. Everyone who died meant something to someone. A lot of people cry.

Olivia talks about Jessie. About how nice it was to work with her at the pantry. How she was caring and creative, a devoted mom. How Ron and Sam were lucky to have her.

That night Mika tries to sleep but instead she just tosses and turns. Carl is in the infirmary and without him their room feels too big and too empty. She leaves all the lights on, but the darkness seems to creep in through the windows anyway.

Back at the prison, Daryl had been the one to bury Daddy. Mika remembers watching him smooth out the shovelfuls of dirt, pose a cross in the ground. Their little graveyard had been tucked into the tallest, greenest grass, yellow dandelions growing like little spots of sunshine. A prison yard could hardly be called beautiful, but whoever had chosen that spot for the graveyard, they’d done their best.

Mika remembers crying, and Daryl squeezing her shoulder and telling her it was going to be okay. “Want me to pick some of them dandelions for him?” he’d asked. Mika nodded.

“And pebbles,” she said. “We need those too.”

“Pebbles?” Daryl asked. “Why?” And Mika wasn’t sure why— she just knew that when she was seven and her great-uncle died, that was what they’d done. Little rocks on top of the grave marker. Stones on stones and shades of speckled grey.

_It’s a mitzvah_ , that’s what Daddy had said.

Well okay then. Mika climbs out of bed and slips through the door, down the stairs and out of the house. She walks to Alexandria’s graveyard, picking up stones as she goes. She looks for nice ones, ones that are round and bright and shiny. They rattle in her hands and sparkle in the moonlight. Rocks are better than flowers, she thinks. Flowers are weeds, flowers die. But rocks are gemstones. Rocks are the most durable things in the world.

She leaves one on Sam’s grave. One on Ron’s. One on Jessie’s.

One on everyone’s.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The rocks on graves thing is a Jewish custom. Samuels is sometimes a Jewish last name, so I decided Lizzie and Mika are Jewish on their dad's side.
> 
> Thank you for reading as always!


	5. Lapis Lazuli

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Congrats to Steven Yeun who just got nominated for an Oscar! That's our Glenn, yay!
> 
> Unrelated-- on a rewatch of "Hearts Still Beating", I noticed that the house I had initially called Number 102 is actually Number 97. So I went back and changed that haha 
> 
> Happy reading, thank you for being here! ♡♡

It’s Beth’s idea.

After the attack, Mika spends a lot of time reading alone on the playground. She just doesn’t know how to talk to the other kids anymore. She watched one of them die, and she'd rather play alone than have to think about that.

Then one day she’s on the swings around sunset, nose-deep in _Because of Winn-Dixie_ when Beth drops outta nowhere onto the swing next to her. “Oh, I love that book,” she says.

Mika looks up at her. “Yeah?”

“Mm-hmm.” Beth glides a foot against the ground, so her swing starts to move. In the low light of dusk, Mika thinks she looks like a fairy. “After I read it, I started lookin’ for lost dogs everytime we went to the grocery store. Never found one though.”

Mika smiles at the image— Beth about her age and running around with her farm animals. She always likes to hear stories of when grown-ups were kids. “We could never get a dog, my mom was allergic,” she says. “But we used to have a turtle.”

“A _turtle_?”

“Yeah. Scallops. He lived in a tank.”

Beth giggles. “Scallops, what a great name,” she says. “I keep telling Daryl we should try to find a pet. If we do, you’re gonna help me name it.”

That night after everything was over, Beth had jumped into Daryl’s arms and kissed him right in front of everyone, so their secret is officially out. Abraham said something about starting a “Cradle Robbing Sugar Daddy Club” and no one will explain to Mika why that’s so funny.

“I like you guys together,” Mika says.

“Me too.” Beth twirls in her swing. “So I’ve been thinking,” she says.

“What about?”

“Well, remember how much you helped when we were sewing up Carl’s forehead?”

Mika shrugs. She doesn’t think she did anything that was a big deal, she held the sponges and passed off the bandages. “I was just doing what you and Dr. Denise told me.”

“Yeah, and you did it real well,” Beth says. “So Denise said I could start helping her out in the afternoons, and I was thinking... maybe you’d want to help with me?”

Help in the infirmary? Mika’s never thought about doing anything like that, but as soon as Beth says it she can see it all in her head. Learning to suture and dress a wound, studying the names of diseases and symptoms and medicine. Always having a way to help, a way to know what she can do when things go wrong. Problems and solutions, and knowing which ones go with which.

Mika’s smile is ear-to-ear. “Yeah. Definitely. I want to.”

“Good,” Beth declares. She is swinging in earnest now, flying back and forth through the air. “It'll be Dr. Denise’s Med School for Girls.”

“That’d be a good book,” Mika says, as she starts to swing too.

——

Carl stays in the infirmary for ten days and then they cautiously move him back to the house. He’s getting better, but he still stays in bed most of the time. Dr. Denise says it could be a few weeks before he’s got all his energy back.

The symptoms are a lot like when Beth got shot: Carl has headaches and dizzy spells, and just generally doesn’t feel so great. Mika, as his roommate and as a new medical student, has decided that she is personally responsible for his health and well-being. She helps him get up when he need to stand, fluffs his pillows and changes his sheets, brings him breakfast in bed every day.

This morning when she carries the breakfast tray in, he sort of half-smiles half-rolls his eyes— eye— at her. “Mika, you really don’t have to wait on me like this,” he says.

“I don’t mind,” Mika says. “And it’s not just for you— it’s my medical training. Just think of me as your nurse.” She sets the tray on lap, carefully arranges everything. There’s a plate of scrambled eggs and toast, some chocolate cereal, a cup of juice and a mug of tea. There’s a tea for her, too.

Carl goes for the cereal first. “Alright, Nurse Mika, whatever you say.”

Mika takes her tea and goes to sit cross-legged on her bed. Michonne had said no when Mika asked if she and Carl could start drinking coffee, so the tea had been a compromise. Mika has decided that she likes hers with no milk but lots of sugar.

“How are you feeling?” she asks.

“Mm, better today than yesterday,” Carl answers— yesterday had been a bad pain day. “So far at least.”

“That’s good.”

“Yeah. Dad said if I’m up for it, I can try riding one of the bikes.”

Mika’s eyes widen. “We have bikes?”

“Yeah, I guess Tobin keeps a few in his garage,” Carl explains. “You can come if you want.”

“Yeah, sounds fun,” Mika says. Though the truth is, she knows Carl won’t be up for. Riding a bicycle is a bit of reach for a boy who’s still struggling with stairs. Carl, Mika has realized, tries to act like he’s doing better than he really is.

Mika blows the steam off her tea, and the suddenly she has a wicked idea. She grins. “Unless you’d rather go with Enid.”

Carl just about spits his cereal out. “Dude—“

“Because you like her! And you wanna kiss her! Muah muah muah!”

“Why— what, that’s not—“ Carl sputters. Mika keeps making kissing noises until he finally throws a pillow at her. She catches it, falls back onto her bed laughing.

“I think you’ll make a great couple,” she says. “And I’m a good judge, I _always_ used to guess who was gonna win on _The Bachelor_. And I figured out that Beth and Daryl were dating before anyone else.”

“ _The Bachelor_ ’s all fake, they edit everything,” Carl says. Then he sighs, tilts his head back against the wall. “And I think Enid’s avoiding me.”

Mika clutches the pillow to her chest. “Why?” she asks.

“I dunno,” Carl says. “Maybe she’s scared.”

“Scared of what?”

He doesn’t answer. He takes a drink of his tea, and tries to put the cup back down on the tray. But he misses. The mug falls, and then he knocks his juice over too and both drinks spill all over him.

“ _Shit_.”

Mika jumps to her feet, grabs a towel and rushes to help him clean up. Carl protests, tries to swats her away. “It’s okay, I’m fine, I got it, it’s—“ But Mika’s just about had it with his act.

“Just shut up and let me help,” she says.

And he does. He stops talking, stops fighting it. Let’s his arms fall to his sides while Mika cleans up the worst of the spill.

“I know you’re not okay,” she says. “You don’t have to pretend like you’re okay. You got _shot_ in the _face_ like two weeks ago. You’re allowed to say it hurts.”

Carl dips his head, his bangs falling all over his face. “I just don’t want everyone to worry.”

Mika’s pretty sure that’s the stupidest thing she’s ever heard. “Well, we’re gonna worry. ‘Cause we’re your family and we love you. So just... get over it.”

Mika finishes mopping up, takes the tray of ruined eggs and sets it on the nightstand. Sits down on her bed and hugs her pillow.

“What’s it feel like?”

It takes him a while to answer, but he does. “Weird,” he says. “It’s all just black on that side. Most of the time it doesn’t _hurt_ , it’s more like it’s strained, like when your legs are tried after you’ve been running. Stings like crazy whenever Denise changes the bandages though. And my head’s still throbbing all the time. Room spins when I try to stand.”

Some of that’s the head trauma, not the lost eye. Some of that’ll go away. The rest...

“Sometimes my scar hurts so bad I think it’s gonna split open,” Mika says. “It only lasts a few seconds though.”

Carl nods. “It’s called phantom pain,” he says. “Hershel used to say he felt it a lot.”

Hershel was always so nice. When Mika used to help in the garden, he’d tell her all about the different plants and seeds and soils. She remembers him limping, but never complaining. “We can tell people that you’re a pirate,” Mika suggests.

Carl kind of laughs. “Michonne said Nick Fury.”

“Who’s that?”

“Superhero.”

“Oh.” Mika’s dad used to like comic books too. For Halloween once, she was Kitty Pryde to his Wolverine, but it was when she was too little to remember. “Can I be your sidekick?” she asks.

Carl scoffs. “If you’re my sidekick, that means you would have to _listen_ to me.”

Oh yeah that’ll never happen. “How about I’m the Pink Ranger?”

This time Carl’s laughter is genuine. “Yeah, I like that,” he says. “We’ll get you a robot pterodactyl.”

“Hell yeah we will.”

——

That night Maggie calls a family dinner, because she has an announcement to make.

“Glenn and I wanted to let y’all know,” she says, once they're all gathered togethered. “That we are expectin’ a baby.”

It’s pretty clear from their subdued reactions that Beth and Daryl already knew, but everyone else is surprised. They form a choir of voices:

_“You’re pregnant?”_

_“Dude!”_

_“Congratulations!”_

_“How far along are you?”_

There’s a lot hugging and squealing and touching Maggie’s stomach. Everyone is excited about it.

Everyone except Mika.

She stays quiet, sitting at the corner of the kitchen table and pushing her mashed potatoes around her plate. She should be happy, she wants to be, she really does. She loves babies. But then she looks up at Judith, in her high chair with applesauce all over her face, and she thinks that she might scream.

She helps Carol with the dishes after, huffing and sighing into the soap suds. Carol catches on.

“Everything okay, honey?” she asks. “You’ve been so quiet tonight.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” Mika says. “Just tired, that’s all.”

Carol gives her the side-eyes. “Okay.”

“Really, I mean it.”

“I said okay.” Carol carefully dries a wine glass with a thin towel. The grown-ups had opened a bottle of Chardonnay, because tonight was a celebration and it was the closest they could find to champagne or something like that. “Are you happy for Glenn and Maggie?”

And there it is, the real question. Mika tries to lie but it just isn’t happening.

“Why would anybody want to bring a baby into this world?” she asks.

Carol’s hand stills against the wine glass. She makes a soft noise in the back of her throat. “Oh, honey.”

“Kids gets hurt,” Mika says. The words come out hard and sparking, pop rocks fizzing in her mouth. “Kids die. Kids _kill each other_.”

“Mika...”

A whole bunch of images are flashing through Mika's head. Judith screaming, and the grave marked with baby shoes. Sam swallowed up in a crush of dead bodies, the look on Ron's face when he pulled that gun. It's not a safe world for kids anymore. You're not safe from the walkers and you're not safe from yourself.

“I just don’t know why anyone would wanna do that. I don’t know what would be good about it.”

“Oh, honey,” Carol says again. She sits Mika down at the counter, takes both of her hands in hers.

“There is so much that’s good about it,” she says. “Seeing first steps and first words. All the laughs and the smiles. All the moments like this— just sitting in the kitchen talking to you? Getting to know the smart, brave, kind little girl that you are? Sure, it’s hard and it’s scary. But it’s worth it.”

Mika’s throat has gone dry, and she has to swallow before she speak. “Even now?”

“Even now,” Carol says. “Because kids like you— and Carl and Judith, and Glenn and Maggie’s baby. You’re going to make this world better than it ever was.”

Her eyes are dry too, and she pulls one of her hands away from Carol’s to rub at them. “I guess Judith is pretty great,” she says softly.

“And she wouldn’t be here without you,” Carol reminds her. And Mika's not proud of that, really. It's not someting to be proud of, it's just something that happened. But she knows this: she's learning how to be a doctor now, and if she needs to save somebody else, she will.

——

It’s a peaceful few months. They decide to expand the town, and everyone works together to rebuild the walls and fix all the damage from the attacks.

Mika goes to school in the mornings, and works with Dr. Denise, Beth and Rosita in the infirmary a few afternoons a week. She also helps Carl with his PT— pretty soon he’s even strong enough to ride a bike for real.

Mika likes Dr. Denise. She’s a little shy, but she’s also silly and smart and a very good teacher. She makes Mika feel useful, even when all they’re doing is sterilizing tools. Dr. Denise is also dating Tara, and Mika is very happy about that. Because Tara is great, and Dr. Denise is great. And Mika loves love.

Soon it’s winter. And winter means Christmas. Maggie is determined to make it as “Christmas” as possible— she wants a tree, decorations, a fancy dinner, the whole nine yards. She’s a little over-the-top about it, probably because her pregnancy hormones are making her want to “nest” but also just because it’s Maggie and Maggie does not do things half-way.

Mika is totally onboard. She helps Maggie make a list of everything they need. Ornaments and stockings and gingerbread. “Can we get a menorah and Hannukah candles too?” Mika asks.

“Absolutely," Maggie says.

“We could do an Elf on the Shelf?”

Maggie laughs. “Maybe when Judith’s a little older.”

Fair enough. Mika crosses that one off the list. She looks at Maggie with pure mischief in her eye. “How about _mistletoe_?” she asks. But Maggie vetoes the mistletoe.

Beth and Tara are also very pro-Christmas, and together they are an Unstoppable Four Girl Christmas Team. It is going to be the best post-apocalyptic Christmas that the post-apocalyptic world has ever seen.

The tree turns out to be the easiest part—Mika just pouts at Abraham and Beth bats her eyelashes at Daryl and they go right out and cut one down. It’s not super tall, but it’s green and sturdy with plenty of branches. Mika is pretty sure that it’s a Virginia Pine.

They find a few strings of lights in the attic of Number 101, but for the rest they have to get creative. Mika makes cut-paper snowflakes and tapes them up all over both houses, and Beth figures out how to make snow-tipped pinecone ornaments with just pinecones, paint and salt. It’s all a little haphazard, but they get both houses looking pretty cute and festive.

There’s not much Mika can do in the way of presents. But she finds some nice paper to cut into strips, and write everyone’s names in fancy rainbow letters. She plans to set them out on the dinner table as place markers, and they’re just the right size to use as a bookmark afterwards. She has plenty of paper left over once she’s done with the family, so she makes bookmarks for her friends at school too… and one for Enid, just in case.

But no matter how crafty they get, there is one thing that just cannot be substituted for: Santa. Not that Mika still believes in Santa, she’s known the truth since she was seven and Lizzie caught Daddy putting the presents under the tree. But Judith’s only a baby, and Mika keeps thinking about how sad it is that she might never even get to believe.

She mentions this to Tara one day, when they’re both hanging around in the infirmary. Mika was getting a lesson on the parts of the brain, but then Tara came in with a package of colorful cupcake liners. Now they are gluing them into a wreath.

“Everything’s just gonna be so different for Judith,” Mika says, as she squeezes out dots of glue “There’s so much stuff she’ll never get to do.”

“Yeah, but different doesn’t have to be bad,” Tara replies. “And who says we won’t get a visit from Santa? He’s probably got all the walkers in the North Pole making toys for him by now.”

Mika rolls her eyes. “I know Santa’s not real, Tara, I’m not a baby.”

Tara makes a face like she’s offended. “What are you talking about? Santa is totally real,” she says. “You know, I met him once.”

Yeah, right. “What, like at the mall?” Mika sasses.

“ _No_ ,” Tara says. She launches into a rambling tale: “When I was in college, I worked part-time at a drive-through. Coffee and donut place. It was kinda boring, but I liked the cash and the free donuts. The chocolate glazed were the best and… Huh, police officer who likes donuts, I just realized how cliché that is… Anyway, it was usually pretty slow on weekdays, so I’d bring my homework. And then one day I’m just sitting there, studying for my psychology final, and I hear someone pull up. I go to the window to take their order, and there he was— Santa. At the drive-through. In his sleigh. He ordered a peppermint mocha, and oatmeal cookies for the reindeer. He told me I was on the Nice List, but if I kept stealing my sister’s clothes I might not stay there. Oh, and I got to feed Prancer.”

Well that’s quite the story that she just pulled out of her ass. “Whatever,” Mika says. “That totally didn’t happen.”

Finally it’s Christmas Day. Mika rushes over to Number 97 as soon as she wakes up, ready to help make dinner. She finds Maggie in the kitchen, the food starting to come together on the table. Mika was expecting the mashed potatoes (instant), and the vegetables and cranberry sauce (canned). But there’s something else she wasn’t expecting. Her jaw drops when she sees it.

“Is that a turkey?” she asks.

Maggie nods. “Wild one," she says. "Daryl went out and caught it last night. Guess someone’s in the Christmas spirit.”

It’s a little more Thanksgiving than Christmas, Mika thinks, but _still_. She practically bounces over to Maggie. “What can I do?”

They’ve got frozen croissant dough, and Maggie tasks Mika with getting it ready to go. She’s so absorbed in making perfect croissant-shapes that she hardly notices when the residents of Number 97 start drifting downstairs.

Glenn comes into the kitchen to kiss Maggie good morning. “You guys are working too hard,” he says. “Take a break, come open your presents.”

Presents? Mika looks up from her pastry dough, and that’s when she sees them: presents. Real ones, with shiny wrapping paper and everything. For the second time this morning, her mouth falls open wide. “Who put those there?” she asks.

Glenn is smiling like he’s up to something. “It was Santa. Who else would it be?

Ugh, this again. Mika could kick him. She marches over to the living room, where Rosita is sitting in Abraham’s lap on the couch. "He’s not lying, _chiquita_ , _"_ she says _._ "They’re from Santa.”

Seriously? “You guys are so annoying!” Mika exclaims. She kneels down by the tree to inspect to presents. They’re mostly small, and imperfectly wrapped with paper that looks to be patch-worked together from a couple different rolls. There’s one for everyone in the family, all of them labelled “Ho Ho Ho, From Santa”.

But Mika recognizes the handwriting immediately. Yeah, they’re from Santa all right. San- _Tara_.

They’re all in on it, clearly— Mika can hear Abraham chuckling. Maggie has wandered in from the kitchen, a smile on her face. “You wanna open yours, honey?” she asks.

Mika shakes her head. “I’ll wait until everyone’s here.”

By mid-afternoon, the whole family has gathered together, and it really does feel like Christmas. Everyone is happy, talking and laughing and playing games, and the whole house smells like turkey and pine needles. Glenn managed to find a real menorah, and Mika has no idea what day Hannukah was supposed to start so she just lights the whole thing. The only thing that she regrets is not getting that mistletoe, because Carl and Enid have been making googly eyes at each other for _hours_ but they won’t get any closer than like a foot apart.

Mika is in the middle of a game of Uno with Abe and Eugene when Tara loudly announces that it is time for presents. She plucks one out from under the tree and brings it over to Mika.

“Ladies first,” she says with a wink.

So Mika tears the package open. Inside is a tacky Christmas sweater, bright red with a reindeer face on the front. She must've found it on a run. It’s like two sizes too big but Mika loves it anyway. She pulls it on over her head and grins.

“Next time Santa comes to your drive-through,” she says, “tell him that I said thank you.”

——

Mika is drinking her tea on the porch one morning when Abraham finds her. “Hey there Little Lady, what are you doin’ over there? Shouldn’t you be at school?”

He’s headed out of his house, probably on his way to work. The construction crew has had a lot to do these last few weeks and Abe has been busy. “It’s Saturday,” Mika reminds him.

Abraham clearly had no idea what day it was, but he does his best to recover. “Damn right it is, but that ain’t no excuse to just be sitting around,” he says.

“I’m not sitting, I’m _caffeinating_ ,” Mika insists. Abraham chuckles.

“Well how ‘bout you get off your caffeinated little ass and come to work with me?”

Mika’s eyes light up. “Really?”

“Of course _really_ , you know I don’t make mince meat with my words.”

So Mika pulls on her jacket and boots and helps Abraham carry his tools to his truck. She settles into the passenger seat and buckles her seat belt. “This is gonna be so fun!” she exclaims.

The construction crew has been gathering materials for possible new structures, and today that means dismantling a few old houses for support beams. It’s about a twenty minute drive, and as they roll through the gates Mika realizes that she hasn’t been in a car since they arrived in Alexandria almost seven months ago. Hasn't been outside the walls either. lShe watches out the window, wide-eyed as the landscape blurs around her. She’d forgotten what it looks like.

Abraham gives her a curious smile. “Whatcha thinkin’ so hard about over there?”

“Just that I haven’t been in a car in a while,” Mika explains. “Reminds me of when we back were on the road. You always let me sit up front then, too.”

“Well of course I did,” Abraham says. “Who else would I play 20 Questions with?”

He make a solid point— Mika is excellent at 20 Questions. Still, though. Mika’s memory of their time on the road is kinda patchy, fuzzy from injury and hunger and thirst and fear. But she knows a lot of it wasn’t good. She knows she cried every night after Ty died and bickered constantly with Carol. Knows that there were days when she was too weak to stand, let alone to run or fight back against a walker. Knows that there were million ways she could’ve died.

Including airbags, maybe. “Yeah, but I’m still too short,” she says.

“And gettin’ taller every day,” Abe tells her. “That’s how I see it.”

They pull up to a small cul-de-sac, where the rest of the construction crew has already gathered. Mika can see the skeletons of four little houses, and the workers carrying wood planks and scaffolding back to the trucks.

“Good morning ladies and gents,” Abraham bellows as he steps out of the car. “Hope you don’t mind, but I brought us some company today.”

Mika can hear a few of the workers grumbling— “isn’t that Carol’s little girl?”— but she forces herself to ignore it. She walks up Tobin, who she knows is in charge of the crew. “I won’t get the way,” she says. “And I can bring you guys water and stuff.”

Tobin smiles at her. Mika doesn’t know him well, but she likes him. He’s nice and he always compliments her and Carol on their cooking. “No problem, good to see you Mika,” he says. “Make sure you wear a hard hat, though.”

So Mika puts a bright yellow hard hat, which makes her feel very professional. She sits on the hood of Abe’s truck, watches the crew work and soaks up the sun. She passes out bottles of water and snacks.

Tobin comments on the snacks. “These aren’t nearly as good as the ones you and Carol make,” he says as he opens a packet of cookies. “How’s she doing, by the way? Been so busy this week, haven’t found time to drop by and say hello.”

At least he doesn’t think she’s Carol’s daughter... “She’s good. And I can bring you some cookies if you want.“

Tobin’s ears go a little red, and then Mika gets it. It isn’t the _cookies_ he’s looking for. “Or you could come over tomorrow,” she suggests. “You know, Sunday. After-Church Brunch.”

She gives Tobin a reassuring pat on the hand. “Think about it.” Then she scampers off.

Mika totes Abraham's toolbox from house to house, and helps load all the trucks up at the end of the day. She’s still wearing her hard hat when they drive back home, and the car is cozy and warm in the hot pink sunset. She leans her head against the glass and shuts her eyes.

“Abe?” she says, her voice heavy with half-sleep.

“Yeah?”

“Does Tobin like Carol?”

She can hear Abraham chuckle. “Hasn’t said it, but I think so.”

 _I knew it_. “Abe?”

“Yeah?”

“Can I keep the hard hat?”

“Sure, why not? We got extra.”

 _Awesome_. “Abe?”

“Yeah?”

“Did you let me sit up front so you could make sure I didn’t die?”

There’s a long pause, and then: “I let you sit up front because you needed someone who was always on your side.”

She’s almost all-the-way sleeping now. “ _Oh_.” And then she’s out.

Tobin does come over after church the next day. Mika and Carol have made sweet potato pancakes, and he eats three. He tells Carol that Mika was very helpful at the construction site yesterday. Mika feels flattered on both counts.

She sneaks off to give them some alone time. They can thank her later.

——

Food runs are frequent these days. They are not starving— not yet, at least— but they are certainly leaning on odds and ends. Carol gets creative with her recipes— Mika didn’t know it was possible to make cookies out of acorns.

Mika looks for books about farming and food science and the Great Depression and she talks about them to everyone. She is a fountain of ideas:

_“Peas and kale grow well in the winter.”_

_“You can make fried cornbread with just cornmeal and baking soda, you don’t even need eggs.”_

_“Dandelion leaves are edible.”_

_“Don’t throw out your potato scraps, we can make latkes.”_

Of course, food isn’t the only thing they get on runs. Dr. Denise is always adding to her list of medical supplies, and sometimes they find books, clothes, toys, all sorts of things. As for Mika, she always has a specific request: “if you find any really cool rocks, bring them to me.”

It starts when Glenn finds a geode. It's about the size of a golf ball, unassuming grey stone around a sparkly cluster of purple gems. “Must’ve been someone’s paper weight,” he tells Mika. “You want it?” And want it she definitely does.

Soon she has a little collection, rocks in all kinds of colors and sizes and shapes. Some of them are the store bought kind, little polished pieces like you’d get at a tourist shop. Others are more natural, just picked up off the ground. Mika identifies most of them from the pictures in her science books— she has granite and pyrite and coal and a whole bunch of colors of quartz. She keeps them in a box under her window, where they can catch the light.

One day Daryl comes back with a smooth little stone, midnight blue with streaks of gold. Mika hands that one right back to him.

“You should give that one to Beth,” she says. “It’s lapis lazuli, it’s her birthstone.”

A few days later he swings by the infirmary to pick up Dr. Denise’s latest shopping list. Mika is there, organizing the storage cabinets, and Daryl gives her a nod hello.

“Thanks for the tip about that rock,” he says, a light flush on his cheeks. “Beth was real happy.”

Mika grins— oh, how she loves love. “You’re welcome.”

“And how ‘bout you, what’s your birthstone?” Daryl asks. “I can keep an eye out for it.”

“Oh, you won’t find it,” Mika says. “It’s opal.”

Daryl shrugs. The next morning he and Rick go out on their run. Mika’s right— they don’t find any opals.

What they do find is a person.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next stop Hilltop, all aboard!
> 
> Lapis lazuli is a secondary birthstone for September. I chose it because A) it's one of the most common birthstones so it didn't seem unrealistic for Daryl to find one and B) Beth kinda strikes me as a Virgo. Mika is Libra by the way. 
> 
> Also my headcanon is that in this universe Rick and Michonne's conversation at the end of "The Next World" goes a little bit like this: 
> 
> **Michonne:** Where's Daryl? 
> 
> **Rick:** I dunno, probably off havin' sex with his girlfriend... 
> 
> _A beat, and then Rick busts into hysterical laughter._
> 
> **Michonne:** What's so funny? 
> 
> **Rick (through his laughter):** It's just... _Daryl Dixon_ has a girlfriend... A _nineteen-year-old_ girlfriend... And I don't. 
> 
> _Another beat, and then Michonne also bursts into hysterical laughter._
> 
> And then he gives her the mints and they start making out and yay Richonne~~


End file.
